In addition to extensive looting of facilities and infrastructure, this devastated the accumulated knowledge and expertise base of the country. When the war ended, a huge, long-term challenge remained. Newly-recruited staff needed to regain the country's lost expertise and knowledge, along with the research materials and infrastructure.

Fortunately, more than a decade of partnership with CGIAR Centers had built up effective regional research networks that now stepped in to help the country recover (Bururchura et al. 2002). The Seeds of Hope (SOH) Initiative played a central role in helping Rwanda tap this reservoir of expertise, materials, and goodwill.

CGIAR Centers, NARS (National Agricultural Research Systems), and the crop commodity networks of the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA) all contributed to helping the new Rwandan staff re-start many important research activities, and initiate new ones required to rebuild the country. Through SOH coordination and guidance, new Rwandan researchers gained skills in seed production, plant breeding, statistics, and methods for conducting socio-economic, on-farm, and participatory research, as well as technology dissemination.

ICRAF, for example had been working with Rwanda since 1987, but the changes wrought by genocide and war meant it had to start almost from scratch again in 1997, reshaping its priorities and approaches to fit new realities. It teamed up with national researchers and with NGOs, such as CARE and Trocaire, to launch a collaborative agroforestry program that has provided more than 30 internships. WARDA sent a team of scientists to train national partners on rice breeding, testing, and selection.

ICRAF focused on the masses of returning refugees that were being resettled in communities called 'umudugudu' scattered throughout the country. It trained students, field technicians and lead farmers (including women) who had the responsibility to rehabilitate the land.

One of those umudugudu on a steep, eroded hillside in the Gishamvu commune, about 140 kilometers south of the capital, Kigali, serves as an example. It became home to 60 families, each allotted only a tiny 30 x 30 meter plot. The scene was lifeless, bare and depressing. Wind swept unchecked down the hillside and nothing grew but short grass, a sure sign of impoverished soils. With ICRAF's help, farmers soon began planting trees such as Calliandra calothyrsus, Leucaena diversifolia, Grevillea robusta and to protect and enhance soils and provide fodder, firewood, and plant support stakes for beans, a mainstay of the rural diet. Women traditionally gather fuelwood across Africa so they especially appreciated the fuelwood-producing attributes of agroforestry. Some have also begun cultivating orange, lemon, papaya and passion fruit trees to generate income, while others are producing avocado seedlings for sale.

Hundreds of Rwandan women have received training from the Agroforestry Research Network for East and Central Africa (AFRENA) through funding from the European Union, learning techniques such as grafting and mixing manure with soil. Much of the work is done through seven community-based nurseries that the project helped farmers establish around the country to provide a supply of tree seedlings.

Since human capacity takes a long time to build, many of these support activities continued for years after the war ended. These included follow-through visits to field sites where the re-established research agenda was being implemented. The continuity provided by the CGIAR Centers and regional research networks has proved vital for reinforcing stability for the longer term.