During the recent Africa Youth Summit in Kigali, Jean-Michel Habineza, a teacher and founder of idebate, called for the scrapping of the current education system inherited from colonial times, where information is merely deposited into the minds of children, rather than encouraging debate and discussion. The New Times’ Dean Karemera spoke to him about the idebate initiative and other issues. Below are the excerptsWhat is idebate?It is a debate programme started last year for secondary schools. It is a platform aimed at improving skills such as public speaking, critical thinking, and problem solving among students. Our main funders are Goethe Institute and universities in the UK and Australia.What made you come up with the idea of idebate?I started debating when I was in S.5 at Green Hills Academy. It was fun but not educational. I felt we needed to debate real issues and kept on challenging myself that we needed to impact and teach the young people how to think critically and express themselves.How did you build on that idea?I constituted a team and engaged head teachers to register their schools and we got positive feedback. We worked with 22 schools this year that include; Green Hills Academy, APE Rugunga, Lycee de Kigali, King David Academy, Lycee Notre Dame de Citeaux, Martyrs Secondary School, AIPER Nyandungu, St. Andre, Gashora Girls’, Cornerstone Academy, Riviera, Star Academy, Kagarama Secondary School, among others.We started by giving students information but we realised that they were not carrying out more research. We taught them some research techniques and encouraged them to read more. After this, we started the debate league and met on a monthly basis at King David Academy for the preliminaries. Eventually, Gashora Girl’s emerged the winners.What was the debate topic this year and how did you come up with it?Our debate topic was about Vision 2020, with the topic, "This house believes that Rwanda would move to a middle-income-status by 2020.

Reason for this; Vision 2020 is the primary document that governs the direction this country is taking and unless students, the youth understand it, it will be difficult for them to make a contribution towards its achievement. What next after Vision 2020? These young people will be in charge of putting in place other measures that will take this country forward. It’s important that they understand it and how it can best be implemented.Rwanda encourages youth to be  innovative, how can debating help realise this?Rwanda needs world-class intellectuals. When I was in the US, I was always looked down upon because students thought I couldn’t debate and this affected my self-esteem. The debate coach at my University encouraged me and I managed to make it. Through debate, I learned how to critically and analytically put my points forward, express myself confidently and help others.We need intellectuals like Ngugi Wa Thiong’o who can articulate issues that can impact on the country. It is through the conflict of ideas that better ideas come up. Unless we engage in debate, we will never know if there are other constructive ideas.How best can the youth be prepared for the future?We have to understand that Rwanda, besides being a land-locked country, is not well endowed with natural mineral resources. Rwanda has to rely on its citizens to prosper and this can only be achieved if we build a knowledge-based economy. Through debate, an individual learns certain important skills such as communication skills, problem solving, public speaking, critical thinking and team work.Foe example, if there’s a problem, a person will first communicate the problem to the people, a team of people will then set out to think about how best the problem can be approached and finally how it can be solved. This is how the future generation will work. People will have to work together and rely on a lot of information to make life changing decisions because we won’t be competing with ourselves but with the whole world.What are some of the challenges you have encountered so far?The first problem we faced was teaching students to read extensively and develop their research skills. But no sooner had we achieved this than we realised that there was inadequate information available to students. We set out to provide information and this is when we found out that some schools had information but did not know how to exploit it.Most students also lacked confidence and felt they couldn’t do it. They actually had the information, strong points to debate but feared to stand before people and debate. It is hard to instil confidence in someone, but thank God many of them are gaining confidence through exposure and experience. As a country, we have a shortage of talent developers.

For instance, there are students we encourage to debate but they tell us that their parents discourage them from debating. This is sad because it means some parents see debate as a wastage of time. It is hard to fight this mentality. Finally, we still have a language problem. Our country is trying to establish itself as a bilingual country and people are trying to achieve this. Once people master the languages, we shall see a huge surge in debate competitions.Any plans for next year?We recently concluded a 10-day debate camp at Gashora Girls’ SS where we had over 150 students from various secondary schools in the country. These students were undergoing debate training facilitated by Central London Debate Society and Monash University in Australia. We are ready for 2014 and are planning to hold our next debate on the first Saturday of February.What will they debate about next year?We want them to look at the education sector. There are many challenges that affect students that require urgent solutions. We want these students to debate on how they can improve the education sector. I am sure they have interesting solutions, considering they are the one’s facing these challenges.How do you feel working with the youth?It is exhilarating and interesting, especially when you see the passion which they have when it comes to debating issues that affect the country. They want to be part of Rwanda’s success story, they have the potential and when a platform like idebate is created, it liberates them and gives them a voice.Furthermore, it encourages them to be free-thinkers. For a generation to develop, it needs out-of-the-box thinkers and debate is one of the tools that can be used to achieve this. When young people are liberated, amazing things happen. I encourage parents to let their children join debating clubs. Parents should stop looking at these debates as a waste of time, but rather  as a way of engaging young people in development thinking.Is this your maiden project?No, there are other projects I have been involved with. In 2007, while in S6, I started a youth organisation called Peace and Love Proclaimers (PLP) which set out to discuss issues affecting society such as reconciliation, helping the poor among others. It is under this PLP that we started "Walk to Remember”, an annual  procession in remembrance of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. The idebate is just one of the projects that I’ve involved with.Who is Jean Michel Habineza?He is a simple and down-to-earth person with a passion to work with the youth. I am 25 years old and I hold a Bachelors degree in International Relations and Communications from Tolstone University. I am currently an English teacher and debate coach at Green Hills Academy. I am not married. I love reading, listening to music and making friends.You are running several projects concurrently and teaching. How do you manage to juggle between these undertakings?I have great people on my team. They are very helpful and I wouldn’t accomplish any of this without their help. I do not have to do all the work myself, I delegate and we help each other. My team has people who are self-driven. They will do the work even without being told. This is what makes them unique and I would work with them any time given a chance