The RUNRES project – in full, The Rural-Urban Nexus: Establishing a Nutrient Loop to Improve City Region Food System Resilience – aims to set a key step in the transformation towards a circular and more sustainable agriculture and waste management. RUNRES will improve the resilience of food systems in four different rural-urban regions across Africa. It will encourage organic and human waste recycling by implementing and scaling of viable and acceptable innovations to transform waste into soil amendments or animal feed to serve as an input for agricultural production of smallholders, thereby contributing to food security, and human and environmental health in city region food systems.
We are currently active in four city regions of sub-Saharan African countries: DR Congo, Ethiopia, Rwanda and South Africa. The project is funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and entails two main phases: a piloting phase (2019–23) and a scaling-up phase (2023–27).
Black-soldier flies’ production, Kamonyi, Rwanda
Coffee plantation, Kabamba, DRC
Building locally important value chains through rural and urban waste recycling solutions to improve the flow of resources and the resilience of rural-urban food systems.
“As a single mother, this job at MAGGOT farm allows me to support my mother, my brother and my one-year-old daughter. Even though I do not enjoy the smell of this grinded organic waste, I am still happy to come to work every day and interact with my colleagues. I hope that someday I can save enough money to buy a sewing machine. My dream is to become a tailor.”
(Julienne Uwase, Kamonyi, Rwanda)
By Numbers…
15+
Partners in the different RUNRES countries
900+
tons of organic waste recovered per month
1’200+
hectares of land amended and/or fertilized
