Becoming a young farmer in Rwanda: aspirations, pathways and challenges

This book investigates young people’s aspirations and pathways toward becoming farmers and the social structures and institutional challenges on their pathways to becoming successful farmers and ensure their future in agriculture in Rwanda. Focusing on the Bugesera district, the study specifically investigates how access to agricultural resources, such as land, affects young people’s success in farming as an occupation and employment source. Using semi-structured online interviews with 12 young people who are currently practicing farming, their farming journey and experiences were deeply studied to understand how their aspirations and pathways to becoming farmers have been shaped. Moreover, how young people use their agency to overcome the constraints they face are also investigated in this study. Young people’s aspirations to become farmers are shaped through toxic logic of aspiration: unquestioned mainstream propaganda transmitted through school, media, and policy and habitus logic of aspiring, constructed by daily life conditions for a given individual’s position in a certain social structure.