Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF)’s newly-elected leaders have been urged to help the country reduce dependency on imports and increase productivity of local consumable goods.

This was the message to members who attended a two-day training of the incoming RPF representatives at the national and provincial levels.

Party leaders said the training, which closed yesterday in Kigali, was part of induction on the party’s ideology and strategies to deliver on their mandate.

In an interview, Wellars Gasamagera, the party’s commissioner in charge of political mass mobilisation, said the new leaders were tasked to help the country in social transformation, precisely on imports substitution and other means of ensuring the party continues to deliver on its goals.

"We looked at how imports substitutes can be used as a means of boosting our capacity to sustain the country’s economy. We seek to bridge a deficit between imports and exports to reduce the country’s dependence on imported goods,” he said.

"We are also trying to change the current mindset of the people who still believe that imported goods are better than what is produced here,” he added.

Participants were also urged to learn from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) operating at the grassroots to sustain projects implementation in their (NGOs) absence.

Gasamagera noted that there have been concerns of a skills vacuum in case an active NGO wound up operations with no capacity and skills to carry-on the project.

"We have been encouraging NGOs to include a component of knowledge transfer in their programmes so that we also acquire some knowledge on how things have been carried out,” he added.

Hundreds of party members who attended the training from across the country were coached on the party’s values and in-house style of ensuring timely service delivery on top of good conduct expected of party members.

According to the trainees, new responsibilities would also include programmes aiming at scaling up developments among the youth and women and how to report and coordinate activities.

Aime Valens Tuyisenge, the chairman of the youth council at the Kigali City level, said he would transfer the knowledge acquired to others with an aim of achieving a common goal.

"Our message is one and it evolves around common goals and efficient way of achieving them through social transformation and ensuring the country’s good economic progress, we will share knowledge with other members at the lower levels,” he said.

Over the past few months, RPF has been doing restructuring at all levels that saw a number of representatives being reelected mainly at the national level, while new entrants were sworn in to help expedite the implementation of the party’s manifesto.

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