About Us 

Kigutu Farm is a resilience-design model farm
committed to eradicating hunger and malnutrition in
our catchment area and throughout Burundi.

Built on 75 acres overlooking Lake Tanganika, the second deepest lake in the world, the farm was intentionally built next to Village Health Works (VHW), a 20-year-old NGO dedicated to health, education, and community engagement with a full-service hospital, an outpatient clinic, and one of the top secondary schools in the country on its campus.

Burundi is a beautiful country, hilly and verdant. In pre-colonial times, it was known as Burundi, Milk and Honey, named for the all-importance of cows and bees. There was a robust culture of music, inventive storytelling, festivals that marked the seasons of life and land, and a unique justice system of Bashingantahe: ordinary people chosen by communities for their wisdom and entrusted with the task of mediating disputes and upholding the peace.  Today, Burundi is ranked as one of the hungriest, most malnourished countries in the world.

The legacy of colonialism with its systematic erasure of the old culture, along with the violence of a twelve-year civil war, from 1993-2005, followed by political instability and infrastructure insufficiency (less than 10% of Burundians have electricity), has led to a loss of agricultural knowledge, widespread food insecurity, and a drastic diminishment of health and well-being.

Trees are cut for firewood and charcoal production, which causes erosion and contributes to flooding and landslides, while unsustainable farming practices and burning of the land make the remaining soil less productive. These challenges coupled with climate-change driven extreme and unpredictable weather patterns that produce prolonged droughts, flooding, and landslides have led to entrenched cycles of poverty and caused to severe declines in physical and mental health.

The farm addresses these challenges by growing a variety of crops and trees and raising poultry and animals, using regenerative methods that promote soil health and produce nutritious food. The mission is to cure hunger and malnutrition and restore the dignity of community members by providing jobs that allow them to better take care of their families.

Our Work

Starting May 2025, members of the local community laid the foundation for a diverse food forest with nutrient-cycling systems that minimize external inputs, rebuild living soils, and produce harvests in both rainy and dry seasons. Practical earthworks and water-retention structures were built to slow runoff, reduce erosion of steep slopes, and keep moisture in the landscape for longer, driving productivity and resilience.

Diversity is central: 22 crop varieties have been planted and soils are being enriched through livestock-waste integration; an apiary of 300 beehives has been built that will strengthen pollination and ecosystem health; and 8,500 trees have been planted, primarily avocado. Ongoing tree planting, includes grevillea and fruit trees to provide food, stabilize hillsides, enhance water retention in the soil, and sequester carbon.

The Farm is already supplying nutritious food to the neighboring community and beyond, as well as the hospital and boarding school on the nearby campus of Village Health Works. An international garden has been planted with vegetables and legumes from the home countries of the VHW’s international staff.

Burundi’s government has generously granted access to an additional 230 acres of good grazing land nearby. This summer, a small herd of cows and bulls will be brought in for meat, milk, and natural fertilizer, some of them revered inyambo cows, the long-horned breed that’s been gone from Burundi for decades. The Farm will also be adding pigs, chickens, and rabbits.

Early Impact

According to interviews conducted with community members, teachers at Kigutu Primary School, and community health workers at Village Health Works, Kigutu Farm is off to a strong start. Chronic malnutrition is frequently diagnosed in the clinic and hospital at Village Health Works. When it persists, it stunts growth and causes permanent health problems in children. 

Families have reported that the kind of meals community health workers recommended as necessary for children to recover from malnutrition were often too expensive or unavailable in nearby markets. Although children at the primary school receive therapeutic porridge through a VHW program, parents said recovery was slow when families couldn’t provide the additional foods recommended by health staff. Families interviewed linked improvements in their children’s health to two changes: access to jobs at Kigutu Farm and access to locally produced nutritious food at affordable prices.

A staff member from Kigutu Primary School reported that the number of students with malnutrition issues has gone down since the farm started. She said the change is visible from semester to semester and expressed gratitude on behalf of both parents and the school community. This observation matches what parents described during home visits: better access to food and income is helping children recover and stay healthier.

Future Plans

We’re making plans to build a training center to share agronomic knowledge with farmers from across Burundi and beyond, including a research center to compile information on soil and plant health. The training center will include a model permagarden for smallholder farmers and an earthworks engineering program for farmers with larger acreage.

Also in the works is lodging and additional agro-tourism facilities with an eye towards more  job creation and additional revenue for the farm.