Editor, 

I AM really at a loss to understand why the Government of Rwanda has been very successful in drawing from our history and homegrown solutions that it can then adapt to respond to contemporary problems that seem beyond the capacity of conventional tools to resolve, but our private sector seems unable to take a leaf from that book.

I mean the private sector is supposedly the more entrepreneurial and sees problems as merely profitable business opportunities. But in our country, the Government actively seeks to innovate while the private sector seems content to act within conventional Western business models in what is at bottom no more than a pre-industrial socio-economic environment.

Why can’t they come up with products and models that fit our situation and its needs, rather than those most suitable to a post-industrial Western world? Do we really lack people who are able to see all the problems that beset us as so much opportunity to exploit, for a profit of course?

Come on Rwandan youth, if your elders can’t think out of the box, I challenge you: do better.

Mwene Kalinda, Rwanda

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