Over the past decade or so, Rwanda has been creating a scientific state, a systematic approach to state management that has measurable indicators for socio-economic progress. 

The purpose of such a system would be to bring control over development processes where interventions are based on an understanding of their likely impacts and to minimise serendipitous outcomes.

Such an approach makes development, complicated and multifaceted processes, a bit more predictable in as far as attempts to understand what works, when, and how, to try to comprehend the circumstances under which certain interventions would be expected to produce positive results.

A scientific approach to the management of any meaningful undertaking ought to be welcomed.

It demystifies ‘development’ and gives confidence to actors in such processes and gives meaning to the potential that their work has on the lives of the ordinary person; it demystifies development so that its practitioners gain satisfaction from knowledge that their work to shenanigans akin to the practice of magic.

Such ought to be the experience of those serving in the scientific state. Which takes us to Gabiro.

What we learned from this year’s leadership retreat is that many are uncomfortable with the expectations that come with the scientific state.

This discomfort is borne out of a number of factors. First, it separates the competent from the mediocre and inept. Second, it reveals the corrupt and malfeasant. Moreover, it is built on systems that, by definition, place a premium on accountability.

More specifically, as it injects public resources into programmes and initiatives, it sets targets for expected outputs and outcomes. Indeed, once the problem to which the resources were committed remains unaddressed, there’s some explaining to do.

There are no two ways about this – it is as promised as day light after darkness. And you can take this to the bank: Sooner rather than later, the systems will discover the reasons for the gaps.

It would be fool’s errand, therefore, for a leader to claim that over the four years he or she has been in office the uptake of mutuelle de santé has increased, say, from 60 percent to 95 percent, and think that the thunderous claps thus received mean that is the end of the story.

In a scientific state, the public servant is in a position to know that systems will gain interest in matching the claimed figures with financial receipts from the contributions of the beneficiaries. Moreover, the leader ought to know that any uncovered mismatches reduce the distance between the claps and the clamps.

Why the scientific state works in Rwanda

The grilling of senior government officials, as happened in Gabiro, is possible for a number of reasons. In Rwanda leaders are drafted into government as individuals. They are not there as representatives of a particular group.

Whereas calculations for ensuring that the government has a ‘national character,’ this is not a preoccupation as is the case elsewhere.

It is a secondary concern that is subordinated to the capacity of the individual to deliver. Once in government, these people cannot claim to be representing any sub-national interest.

As such, a thorough grilling of a public official cannot be perceived as an attack against this or that community. Moreover, if the reason for the grilling is incompetence, no other member of the society can ascribe onto themselves that incompetence by virtue of the accident of their perceived shared group membership.

In this regard, the instrumentalisation of identity has been nipped in the bud in Rwanda. Ethnicity has, for the most part, lost its political use; its currency has been devalued in the public space, with its residual value in individual decisions regarding their private lives.

It is by transcending the politics that hijacks groups for personal benefit that Rwanda has been able to build a scientific state that cannot exist side by side with greed, incompetence, and mediocrity. Clearly, one has to give way for the other to thrive, and whichever prevails has significant consequences in the lives of the ordinary person.

Decision 2017

Those who consider the scientific state to be an impediment for their private ambitions cannot wait for it to derail. This way, they can proceed to ride roughshod over the weaklings in society, to eat their lunch.

This is why the balance of opinions from readers’ comments on articles in this paper on the subject of Decision 2017 focuses on the potential to trample upon newly acquired rights as a serious concern, unsure whether the scientific state has established firm ground, and that Gabiro was testament to the fact that any let-up would bring out the hyenas.  

For some, therefore, 2017 brings out the proverbial fork in the road –Rwanda’s crossroads. If that is true, then Decision 2017 has already come down to the question whether the scientific state shall thrive or whether it will retreat and wither away.