I am Matteo Burattini, a second-year student in “Management for Enterprise” at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. During my second semester, I had the opportunity to do an internship at the E4Impact Country Office in Kigali, Rwanda.
Throughout my three-month internship, I was lucky enough to work directly on part of the FOSTERING project, funded by the European Union and led by E4Impact with FXB Rwanda, which aims to develop Rwandan agricultural cooperatives to promote sustainable agriculture.
Together with the E4Impact team, Fabio Covili, the intern with whom I shared this experience, and I were commissioned to conduct a market analysis to identify strengths and areas of intervention to help cooperatives grow. The market analysis was conducted at both quantitative and qualitative levels. The quantitative analysis was carried out by using questionnaires, while for the qualitative one, we conducted numerous interviews, mainly with the cooperatives benefiting from the project and the actors in the pineapple, passion fruit and sweet potato value chain.
During the internship, we visited the cooperatives’ fields and offices located in two districts in north-western Rwanda several times to understand their working methods and potential. Afterwards, Fabio and I conducted interviews with other actors in the value chain, such as exporters and companies collaborating with the cooperatives, as well as Rwandan government agencies. Thanks to the latter, we were able to better understand both the national context, in relation to the products covered by the project, and the dynamics of collaboration between companies and cooperatives, and we were able to better identify existing criticalities. At the end of the interviews, we began drafting the report, proposing solutions that could foster the growth of cooperatives.
Thanks to this internship experience, I discovered many things about Africa, about Rwanda, but also about myself. Being in such a dynamic context and actively participating in cooperation projects pushes you to always be proactive, with the advantage that your opinions and ideas really count and can make a difference. Besides the work aspect, living in a completely different context and daily meeting people with a different culture from mine has enriched me enormously on a human level.
Since Fabio and I were the first two interns in Rwanda, I would like to share some considerations on this country. Rwanda made a deep impression on me, as one can clearly perceive, both from the people and the government’s initiatives, a strong determination to recover and grow after the tragic genocide of 1994. The capital Kigali also conveys this same message, thanks to its being modern and constantly evolving. Moreover, the country is very safe, both in the city and in the suburbs, which allowed us to explore and live fully this experience.
I thank the E4Impact Foundation for this opportunity and wish everyone a similar experience, because it is truly worth it.
Matteo Burattini