The newly appointed Education minister, Papias Malimba Musafiri, has said that the proposed legal framework to guide the disbursement and recovery of university education loans will address the existing challenges.

Speaking to The New Times during an exclusive interview on Monday,  Musafiri said he expected Parliament to pass a draft law on the matter in the next two months or so.

The bill was tabled before the Lower House recently after Cabinet approved it in May.

One of the major proposals in the draft policy is the transfer of university education loan scheme from under the ministry to Rwanda Development Bank (BRD).

This, Musafiri said, will see the bank provide the unsecured education loan to beneficiaries mainly on the basis of the Ubudehe social stratification, which puts Rwandan households in different categories depending on their socio-economic status.

However, the legal framework will give the bank powers to recover the money once the recipient has completed education and started working.

While government acknowledges there have been low levels of recovery of these loans, the bank is expected to aggressively pursue repayment, and will work closely with employers and other actors such as the credit reference bureau in cases of default.

Musafiri, who last week replaced Prof. Silas Lwakabamba at the helm of the Education ministry, said BRD will need to manage the university loans "just like any other loan facility”.

Cutting red tape

As part of the reforms, government has proposed to inject about Rwf40 billion annually into the scheme for the next 10 years, with view to help the fund stand on its own in the long term.

The scheme is expected to benefit students studying in the country as well as abroad.

For locally based students, BRD is expected to finance tuition expenses, living allowances and research costs, while those studying abroad will also benefit through medical expenses and air tickets.

Every successful applicant will be required to sign a contract with the bank.

Meanwhile, Musafiri said the transfer of the scheme to a financial institution, which will work directly with the beneficiaries, will eliminate the red tape that resulted in late disbursement of the loans to students.

"The approval process has been such a long chain,” he said. "You had several stages between the Ministry of Finance and the beneficiary; this will no longer be the case.”

Musafiri, who was until Wednesday the principal of the University of Rwanda’s College of Business and Economics, also pointed out that the new arrangement will also see more Rwandan youths access the  university education  loan facility.

"When you increase the money revolving, you increase the number of beneficiaries,” he added.

Concerning the challenge of school dropouts, the minister said he was keen on working with other authorities, especially at the grassroots level, to iron out the issue. "We will work with everyone involved, including sector and cell leaders, as well as associations of teachers and parents to ascertain how serious the issue (dropout) is.”

Plagiarism detector

He added: "We need to find out how many are dropping out, where they going and what are they are doing”.

Education officials have recently expressed doubts over the figures from different districts regarding the state of school dropouts, saying that some head teachers could have exaggerated the issue of school dropout to justify expenditure under the capitation grant arrangement.

The ministry said they had launched investigations into the matter.

On the issue of plagiarism that’s said to be widespread in institutions of higher learning, Musafiri hinted on a plan to employ a software that detects plagiarised academic content.

"Students will be required to submit soft versions of their work, and this means plagiarised content that’s beyond the set threshold will be electronically detected and rejected,” Musafiri explained.

Asked about motivation of teachers, Musafiri said that, while there are no plans to increase teachers’ salaries in the new financial year (2015-16), teachers need to make the most of other existing incentives to uplift themselves economically.

He cited Umwalimu-Sacco, a teachers’ savings and credit cooperative to which the government has committed Rwf5 billion, that’s being disbursed on an incremental basis.

The ministry has also mooted the idea of paying school fees for at least two children of every teacher, while it has also rolled out a scheme to provide shelter for teachers.

Click here for the interview