Lucia has over 15 years in the agriculture sector during which she worked with various national and international organizations. She possesses extensive expertise in market systems, agribusiness, agricultural finance, private sector development, business development, post-harvest management, and nutrition.
She currently serves as the Senior Partners Coordination Officer at AGRA, where she leads the coordination of various partners under the Mastercard Foundation Agri-Food System Portfolio in Rwanda. Her role focuses on aligning efforts, leveraging other locally funded initiatives, fostering collaboration, enhancing peer learning and supporting effective program implementation.
Previously, she was the Chief of Party for Feed the Future Rwanda Orora Wihaze Activity implemented by Land Lakes Venture37. In this role, she provided strategic vision, overall leadership, and technical direction to the project. Before that, she served as Deputy Chief of Party for the same project, contributing to the design, implementation of interventions aimed at enhancing private sector-led small livestock value chains and promoting increased Animal Sourced Food (ASF) consumption among women and children.
She also held leadership roles at Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) as the Project Manager for the Marketplace for Nutritious Foods, and at the Climate Resilient Post Harvest and Agribusiness Support Project (PASP) as Operations Manager, a project co-funded by the IFAD and the Government of Rwanda. In addition, she served as the Head of planning, Monitoring and Evaluation for the Post Harvest Handling and Storage Task Force at MINAGRI, and as the Executive Advisor to the Minister of State for Agriculture.
She holds a Master’s degree in Food Science and Nutrition from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University-India, and a Bachelor’s degree in Food Science and Technology from the University of Rwanda. Lucia possesses expertise and certifications in various domains, including project management (by APM-UK and Humentum-USA), budget monitoring essentials (by Humentum-USA), Market System Development (by MarketShare Associates-USA), HACCP and GMP in Food Industries, ISO certification, and food processing (by UIRI-Kampala). Additionally, she completed a specialized training in Grain Security for Developing Countries (by Henan University of Technology – China).