Building happier families in the Rwandan tea industry
Everyone loves a hot cup of tea. Maybe some milk, a little honey. Perhaps you are bundled up on a chilly morning, soaking in the warmth of the exotic flavour.
But do you know the faces of those who bring tea to your cup?
In Rwanda, where tea is among the top cash exports, most tea plantation workers are young women. Some of these young women are pregnant, breastfeeding, or are imminent mothers. But since the plantations are not safe for children, mothers cannot bring them to work to breastfeed or ensure they receive well-balanced meals.
Several years ago, when Asterie Nyirabatware was giving birth to her third child, she was suddenly faced with a terrifying scenario: she was bleeding uncontrollably and she was nowhere near the care of trained doctors and nurses.
Like her two previous deliveries, and like many other women in her community, Asterie had decided to give birth at home, unaware of the extensive risks.
She rushed to a health centre, and luckily she and her baby survived. But the experience stuck with her.
Multidimensional Child Poverty in Rwanda: A Multiple Overlapping Deprivation Analysis
Rwanda has achieved remarkable progress in reducing poverty over the past decades. Since 2000, the monetary poverty rate has fallen from nearly 59% to under 40%, with extreme poverty dropping from 40% to 16%. Despite these impressive gains, poverty still affects two out every five Rwandans.
Multidimensional child poverty analysis is an important tool to evaluate the impact of a government’s poverty agenda. Assessing the current challenges from a child’s point of view offers important insights on the nature of poverty in Rwanda – who the poor are, why their poverty persists, and how poverty is inter-generationally transmitted.
