Sectors of Production
Senior 3 · Entrepreneurship
Sectors of Production
Lesson 1 of 4
24 min
In 2025 the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR) counted 4,772,705 employed people. Its Labour Force Survey found that 39.1% of them worked in agriculture, forestry and fishing, more than in any other branch of the economy. In the same year NISR’s national accounts gave agriculture 20% of gross domestic product (GDP), the value of everything produced in the country.
So about two workers in every five produced about one franc in every five. In Senior 1 you learned to sort jobs into three sectors. This unit goes further: what each sector really contains, what it is worth to Rwanda, and why the figures look the way they do. This lesson starts where all production starts: with nature.
Definition
Production: any activity that creates goods or services to satisfy human wants. Growing beans, making soap and cutting hair are all production.
Sector of production: a large group of productive activities that do the same kind of work: taking from nature (primary), making goods (secondary) or providing services (tertiary).
Primary sector: the sector that obtains raw materials and food directly from nature: farming, livestock keeping, fishing, forestry, mining and quarrying.
Raw material: a natural product in its basic state, before it is processed, such as green coffee cherries, hides or tin ore.
Primary activities fall into two groups. Some take what nature has already made; others breed and grow plants and animals so that nature makes more.
Definition
Extractive industry: a primary activity that removes natural resources without growing or breeding them, such as mining, quarrying and fishing in a lake. What is taken is not replaced by the producer.
Genetic industry: a primary activity that breeds or grows living things so that they multiply, such as crop farming, livestock keeping, fish farming and tree plantations.
Example: a fisher with a net on Lake Kivu is extractive; a farmer raising tilapia in a pond is genetic, because the farmer breeds and feeds the fish.
| Activity | What is done | Examples in Rwanda | Group |
|---|---|---|---|
| Food-crop farming | growing crops mainly to eat or sell at home | beans, maize, cassava, bananas, Irish potatoes, rice in valley marshlands | genetic |
| Export-crop farming | growing crops mainly for sale abroad | coffee, tea, pyrethrum, flowers and fruit (horticulture) | genetic |
| Livestock keeping | rearing animals for milk, meat, eggs, hides and honey | cattle, goats, pigs, poultry, bees | genetic |
| Fishing | catching fish from natural waters | isambaza (small sardine-like fish) and tilapia from lakes | extractive |
| Fish farming (aquaculture) | raising fish in ponds or floating cages | tilapia in ponds and lake cages | genetic |
| Forestry | planting, tending and cutting trees | eucalyptus and pine plantations for poles, timber and firewood | genetic (plantations) |
| Mining and quarrying | taking minerals and stone from the ground | tin ore (cassiterite), coltan, tungsten ore (wolframite), gold; building stone, sand, clay | extractive |
Primary output changes from year to year. NISR reported these changes in production for 2025 compared with 2024:
| Sub-sector (NISR, 2025) | Change in production |
|---|---|
| Food crops | +3% |
| Export crops | +32% |
| of which coffee | +60% |
| of which tea | +8% |
| Mining and quarrying | +17% |
| Agriculture sector as a whole | +7% |
Warning
Two traps when you read Rwanda’s statistics. (1) Textbooks put mining and quarrying in the primary sector, but NISR’s GDP tables count them under industry, with manufacturing and construction. NISR’s “agriculture” share (20% in 2025) is therefore agriculture, forestry and fishing only, not the whole primary sector. (2) Since its new international definition, the Labour Force Survey counts only farmers who produce mainly for sale or barter, or who work for pay, as employed in agriculture. People who farm only to feed their own household are counted separately, so the 39.1% does not include every farmer.
Definition
Subsistence farming: farming mainly to feed the farmer’s own household, with little left to sell. Commercial farming: farming mainly to sell the produce for profit.
Example: a family growing beans and sweet potatoes on a small plot for its own meals is subsistence farming; a cooperative growing maize to sell to a flour mill is commercial farming.
| Importance | How it works |
|---|---|
| Food security | Crops, milk, meat and fish feed the population and reduce the need to import food. |
| Employment | It employs more people than any other branch: 39.1% of the employed in 2025, before counting subsistence farmers. |
| Raw materials for industry | Factories need coffee cherries, milk, hides, maize, timber, stone and tin ore to work on. |
| Foreign exchange | Coffee, tea, horticulture and minerals are sold abroad and earn foreign currency to pay for imports. |
| Income in rural areas | Most rural households earn at least part of their income from farming, livestock or fishing. |
| Market for other sectors | Farmers and miners buy seeds, fertiliser, tools, transport and loans, which gives work to factories, traders and banks. |
| Government revenue | Mining licences, royalties and taxes on agricultural businesses fund public services. |
These problems help explain the opening puzzle: much of the work is done by hand on small, rain-fed plots, so each worker produces less than a worker with machines, irrigation or a factory behind them.
Tip
Exam technique: Point, Explain, Example. For “Explain the importance of the primary sector”, each point earns full marks only with all three: “Raw materials: the sector supplies inputs to factories, for example milk to a dairy that makes yoghurt.” A list of single words usually earns half.
Worked example 1: how many people work in the sector?
In 2025, 4,772,705 people were employed and 39.1% of them worked in agriculture, forestry and fishing. How many is that, to the nearest ten thousand?
So about 1,870,000 people. Agriculture’s share of GDP was 20% of Frw 23,387 billion:
That is about Frw 4,677 billion of output in 2025.
Interpret. The sector held 39.1% of the employed but made 20% of GDP. The real gap is wider still, because that 20% also includes food grown by subsistence farmers, who are not counted among the employed.
Worked example 2: extractive, genetic, or not primary at all?
| Activity | Decision | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Digging sand from a riverbed to sell to builders | primary, extractive | takes a natural resource without growing it |
| Keeping bees for honey | primary, genetic | the farmer keeps and breeds the colonies |
| Grinding maize into flour | not primary (secondary) | it processes a raw material into a new product |
| Selling fish at a market | not primary (tertiary) | trading is a service; nothing is caught or grown |
| Planting a eucalyptus woodlot | primary, genetic | the trees are planted and grown |
Test to use: first ask “is something taken from nature?” If not, the activity is not primary. If yes, ask “did the producer grow or breed it?”
Practice
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the tree diagram, the tables, the worked examples and the practice items (2026).
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
