The Kigali Leadership Summit that started on Friday at the Serena Hotel has proved to be a big inspiration to participants as speakers extolled the importance of visionary leadership.

For the past two days, keynote speakers from Canada, Kenya, South Africa, the US and Rwanda and others speakers mentored by the late Dr Myles Munroe, the founder of the International Third World Leaders Association (ITWLA), discussed the importance of visionary leadership.

On the final day of the summit organized by the ITWLA, yesterday, one of Dr Munroe’s protégés, Sugira Hategekimana, a Rwandan living in Canada, deliberated on the keys to effective leadership.

"Some people try but because they are not committed, when something goes wrong, they just give up. But commitment keeps you there. You have to persevere. You must be dedicated. Be different,” Hategekimana said, adding that "spiritual empowerment” or "connection to our creator” was equally indispensable.

Expounding on vision versus sight, Hategekimana said that sight tells us ‘what is’, but vision shows you ‘what it could be’.

"Vision is what you see not with your physical eyes, he said, but what you see with your heart or mind. "Nothing is what it is but what you think it is, or how you perceive it. That’s why nobody can prevent you from having a vision even when you are blind,” he noted.

Participants such as Emery Batayika, Learning and Development Manager at Tigo Rwanda, told The New Times that the summit stirred them up, especially because of the keynote speakers’ teachings on visionary leadership.

"What really stirred me up is that a leader sees the end before even something happens. This stirred me up, to wake up and reignite my own dreams that were starting to die. Also very important is the sense of how leadership is not for the sake of my own ambition but for impacting positively on many people,” Batayika said.

"It is for the sake of solving a problem. This has reminded me that I have to revive my vision but also bear in mind that everything is not just about me, but it is all about serving people and resolving problems.”

Aloys Bishariza, a missionary from Burundi, said he has primarily benefited through expanding his vision.

"This summit is adding more insight and has opened my mind to think bigger and also going deeper into how I should not let fear or any other discouragements prevent me from achieving and get to the goal God has set for me,” he said. 

Organisers say the summit aims to equip participants with the capacity to exploit their full potential and experience a life based on a vision of a better future rather than limitation of what they currently encounter.

Among the keynote speakers were retired Anglican bishop John Rucyahana and Charlie Masala (South Africa), senior vice president of ITWLA.