More-than-human farming

Cooperatives, climate shocks, and digital adaptation in Rwanda’s agrarian economy

Bibliographic Data

ID24238169
AuthorsCaroline Wamala-Larsson (0000-0003-4920-9182), Linley Chiwona‐karltun (0000-0003-2441-3814), Simeon Sibomana (0000-0001-9988-0658), Alfred R Bizoza (0000-0002-1180-9169), Franklin Amuakwa-Mensah (0000-0002-3581-4704)
Year2026
Volume34
Issue2
Pages503-523
Publication date2026-05-04
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGender & Development (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1355-2074 • E-ISSN: 1364-9221
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13552074.2026.2678680
OpenAlexW7223085684
LanguageEN
References cited18

Rwanda remains a predominantly agrarian economy, with the majority of the population relying on rain-fed farming for livelihoods. This reliance makes rural communities particularly vulnerable to climate shocks such as heavy rains, floods, droughts, and pest outbreaks, which disrupt production and markets in significant and uneven ways. Women and youth farmers are disproportionately affected, facing barriers to land access, credit, and technical know-how, while carrying additional care burdens that constrain their adaptive capacity. Drawing on field-level interview data from six cooperatives engaged in coffee, poultry, horticulture, and staple crop farming, this article explores how collective structures and emerging digital solutions are shaping climate resilience in Rwanda with a focus on climate change adaptation for women and youth. Cooperatives provide critical forms of mutual support, pooling resources, distributing inputs, experimenting with soil conservation, and sharing climate information through radio, mobile alerts, and training. These strategies help mitigate shocks but also reveal persistent inequalities in who accesses, benefits from, and influences adaptation pathways. Guided by feminist new materialist perspectives, we understand Rwandan farmer cooperatives as more-than-human assemblages where rain, soil, terrain, seeds, digital apps, and gendered bodies intra-act to shape adaptation possibilities. Climate events emerge not as external impacts but as active participants in these assemblages, reconfiguring what is possible for farmers in specific times and places. In this framing, resilience is relational: co-produced by human actors, non-human forces, and technologies, all embedded in unequal social and institutional structures.

Agricultural risk and resilience · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Climate change impacts on agriculture

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