FAIM Furthers Efforts with Food Security in Rwanda with OPIC Loan
Kigali, Rwanda (PRWEB) September 16, 2013 -- Forestry and Agricultural Investment Management, USA, LLC, (FAIM) furthers efforts with food security in Rwanda with loan from Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the U.S. government’s development finance institution.
Based in Kigali since 2010, FAIM grows virus-free plants such as banana varieties, passion fruit, tamarillos and pineapple. With the recent OPIC funding, the company will expand their operation with new tissue culture laboratories to further production of their mainstay plants as well as starting production on new plant varieties like potatoes and strawberry plants.
FAIM, CEO, Steven Jones, notes, “My wife, Cheryl, and I developed this basis for this program to help the African farmer about 6 years ago after participating on a USDA Trade Mission to Madagascar and South Africa. There wasn’t anything that our nursery in Tennessee could offer these people that would make their lives better. So, we developed a program that would work to solve many of the problems that the African farmer is experiencing with their crops beginning with clean healthy plants which will ultimately lead to better food security. It took years of tweaking, locating the right social investors, receiving a grant from AECF (African Enterprise Challenge Fund) to help get our project off to a good start. Now, here we are now 3 years on the ground in Rwanda and growing once again with OPIC financing. This allows us to get additional tissue culture labs and growing facilities installed for higher plant production.”
According to Jones, the FAIM program began in Rwanda one of the most densely populated countries in Africa yet lacking in food security. The banana and pineapple production, alone, in Rwanda has seriously declined in the past few decades leaving the country to import much of its produce. Providing the Rwandan farmers with healthy plants, extension services and FAIM’s own Farm School, they now have the opportunity to successfully grow quality produce to sell in local markets as well as through other distribution networks.
FAIM grows plants for food security farming for farmers in Rwanda and other sub-Saharan African countries, Middle East and Asia. For more information on Forestry and Agricultural Investment Management, please visit their website: http://www.faim.co
Steve Jones, Forestry and Agricultural Investment Management, http://www.faim.co, +250 78 838 6266, [email protected]
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