UNDP Rwanda

Today, our Resident Representative @FatmataLSesay and @AfDB_Group's Rwanda Country Manager @AissaToureSarr1 visited @UrugoWoc in Kayonza.

Since 2013, the center has reached more than 10,000 women. Its model is integrated: women learn a skill, practise it in the center's enterprises and 14 women-led cooperatives, then move into jobs or start businesses of their own.

Thank you to the WOC team for a warm welcome. Your work shows what is possible when women have both the skills and the space to put them to work.

Did you know? ∼60% of Rwanda's GDP comes from sectors highly dependent on nature, like tourism and agriculture.

This week, regulators, banks, insurers & academia are coming together to learn how to assess & act on nature-related financial risks.

Via our BIOFIN initiative with @Kigali_IFC & @REMA_Rwanda.

Carbon Market Africa Summit is around the corner!

13-15 October, the people shaping the carbon markets will gather in Kigali.

The conversations will be big. The opportunity, even bigger.

Ikaze!

#CMAS2026 #CarbonMarkets #Africa

Environmental and financial leaders need a common language to mobilise finance for nature.

Today, with @Kigali_IFC, we launched the Executive Sustainable Finance Masterclass, welcoming its first cohort of leaders working to turn Rwanda's sustainability goals into investable opportunities.

Every road, dam and building starts with an impact assessment. When biodiversity is built into that process, development protects the natural systems Rwandans depend on. Proud to partner with @REMA_Rwanda through our Biodiversity Finance Initiative.

Managing chemicals and waste safely protects health, livelihoods and jobs.

Co-chairing today's Local Project Appraisal Committee with @REMA_Rwanda and partners on updating Rwanda's National Implementation Plan under the Stockholm Convention, funded by @theGEF, our ResRep @FatmataLSesay urged that the plan become a development tool guiding investment across sectors.

This afternoon our ResRep joined young women professionals for an inspiring conversation on aspiring for leadership positions.

@FatmataLSesay shared her professional journey, the leadership lessons she has learned, and the power of women supporting each other. She encouraged participants to focus on the kind of leaders they are becoming and the responsibility they carry toward the people and communities they serve.

This evening, our ResRep @FatmataLSesay and team met @RwandaICT MoS Hon. @yves_Iradukunda and DG Innovation & Emerging Technologies @estherkunda.

At the heart of the discussion was the need to turn Rwanda’s growing innovation infrastructure into real opportunities.
Discussions ranged from @timbuktooafrica HealthTech and @UR_Unipod, to Hanga Pitchfest 2026, to @MeteoRwanda using AI to improve forecasting for agriculture.

A lot of what a country needs to build has already been built somewhere else. The difficulty is reach.

South-South cooperation closes that distance. Less signing ceremony, more officials studying a system, arguing with it, rebuilding it for their own institutions.

Benin and Rwanda 👇

This afternoon, our Resident Rep. @FatmataLSesay , met Hon. @Dominiquehab , Minister of @RwandaLocalGov, to reaffirm the long-standing UNDP–MINALOC partnership and explore how to build on it.

Discussions centred on the digitization of Imihigo and the use of performance data to guide district planning and support.

Talks also covered extending the hands-on technical assistance already helping districts, so more local governments can serve citizens effectively.

Government priorities must lead, and development partners must align behind them.

That was the focus of today’s meeting at the @RwandaFinance together with finance and climate partners on mission in Rwanda.

Together, we are working to develop investment-ready projects and mobilize financing for climate-smart agriculture, nature conservation, resilient cities and clean energy

Rwanda's climate priorities need financing that reaches households, farms and ecosystems.

Our ResRep @FatmataLSesay met Nordic Development Fund Managing Director @santalasatu to discuss potential partnerships in climate services, clean cooking and innovative biodiversity finance in Rwanda.

We look forward to taking these discussions further.

Congratulations @RDBrwanda on a successful 21st #KwitaIzina.

Rwanda continues to show that conservation is not only an ethic, but an economy, one that requires sustained investment year after year.

Through the Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN), #UNDP is proud to support Rwanda’s efforts to mobilize the financing needed to protect its rich biodiversity for generations to come.

📸 by Djasiri Shumbusho

Underway now at the Rwanda Pavilion, our #AFSF2026 side event on AI-powered climate intelligence.

Recurring point in the room: a forecast that arrives late is not a forecast. Accuracy and timeliness have to come together, and no single institution builds that alone.

#AFSF2026

From data to impact, the panel at our #AFSF2026 side event takes up the question underneath the technology: what does it take to turn better forecasts into decisions farmers and planners can actually make?

Join us at the Rwanda Pavilion tomorrow from 9 AM.

Forecasts only help if they're accurate enough to act on, and reach the people making planting decisions.

Tomorrow at #AFSF2026, we're discussing what AI and machine learning could change about weather forecasting and early warning across Africa.

📍 Rwanda Pavilion, 09:00–10:30

A day on, one thing stays with us: the women who grow Africa’s food don’t need to be spoken for, they need a seat at the table, and the finance and markets to match.

Highlights from our side event for the International Year of the Woman Farmer at #AFSF2026
Watch 👇 #YearoftheWomanFarme

A standard is only useful if it changes what organisations actually do.

@REMA_Rwanda , @rwandastandards and @UNDP - BIOFIN convened leaders from finance, agriculture, tourism and beyond to work through how ISO 17298 the biodiversity standard, helps Rwandan businesses measure their impact on nature and act on it.