Kagame attributes Rwanda’s success to home-grown initiatives

President Kagame has said that Rwanda managed to attain satisfactory results in local government due to home-grown initiatives.

The president was addressing participants at the on-going 2013 Commonwealth Local Government Conference taking place in Uganda.

The President said that these initiatives by Rwanda aimed at bringing about better governance, greater economic development as well as social protection for the most vulnerable.

The Head of State mentioned Performance contracts (imihigo), One cow per family, Arbitration of local disputes by volunteer mediators, Communal work (Umuganda) and others as example of such initiatives.

He said that this view is informed by experience and evidence that the benefits of good governance and the development that it unleashes have the greatest impact at the local level, as policies and programmes are customised to community needs, with citizens participating actively, and entrenching democracy.

President Kagame made it clear that local democracy practices are not always the same and not transferrable, because they are context-specific.

He however, said that aspiration to a better life is universal and therefore the path taken in some countries to realise this may be worth sharing.

The President said that Rwanda’s path to effective local government has been through decentralization.

“Decentralisation ensured that Rwandans are empowered to fully participate in planning, implementing and managing their own development processes.”

“The framework we adopted was a result of wide consultations, aiming for an innovative approach to inclusive government and to fast track development.

It was also in response to popular demand to break with the centralised authority of the past in which decision-making and resources were tightly controlled leading to corruption, manipulation and promotion of dependence,” he said.

He said that Rwanda is now in the third phase and it has been discovered that that when the citizens take responsibility for their development processes, a lot can be achieved in a relatively short time.

“The impact all this had on the lives of ordinary Rwandans has been just as important as the specific form it took. In the last 13 years that we have had a decentralised system, local government units have truly become engines of social and economic transformation.”

The president told the delegates that the empowerment of the people has meant that they are able to demand more and better services, such as clean water supply, roads, electricity, health care facilities, and so on, from their leaders.

He called governments to develop the necessary skills capacity to match the political will that exists, so as to be able to translate more policies into concrete action and results.

He further said that shortages in infrastructure like roads and energy need to be addressed as a matter of priority and that there must be greater coordination between government, the private sector and civil society to raise the quality of delivery of services.

“The impact all this had on the lives of ordinary Rwandans has been just as important as the specific form it took. In the last 13 years that we have had a decentralised system, local government units have truly become engines of social and economic transformation.”

The president told the delegates that the empowerment of the people has meant that they are able to demand more and better services, such as clean water supply, roads, electricity, health care facilities, and so on, from their leaders.

He called governments to develop the necessary skills capacity to match the political will that exists, so as to be able to translate more policies into concrete action and results.

He further said that shortages in infrastructure like roads and energy need to be addressed as a matter of priority and that there must be greater coordination between government, the private sector and civil society to raise the quality of delivery of services.