We followed it keenly as any other stakeholder. The two-day 13th edition of the Rwanda National Dialogue, Umushyikirano 2015, found us in the middle of a data entry exercise, with three of the team members leading very animated arguments.

Solange, the ‘speaker’ leading the dialogue picked three key issues emerging from the debate and challenged members to focus on these and propose tangible strategies. 

The three inter-related issues were: President Paul Kagame’s piercing question: ‘What has your being young and educated delivered to the people of Rwanda?’ The second issue was the request by a youth participant from Kigali, for the youth to exploit the valleys around the city for agricultural production, and the third was a remark by a lady participant from Burera District, regarding the natural resource in Northern Province, namely volcanic stones.

Nicholas, one of the male in the three members leading the debate, wondered what value the Burera woman expects from these stones. Solange, born and educated in Nairobi, cut him short.

According to her, these stones are the fulcrum around which the three pillar issues under debate will be solved. She contends that her home in Nairobi and her schools were constructed out of volcanic stones as those in Burera. And this is where President Kagame’s challenge to the youth will be answered, picking from the zeal expressed by the Kigali youth participant.

"Take the case of Shyingiro sector in Musanze District, where we collected the data we are working on’, she contextualised her argument. "This place is rich in all senses of the word: rich fertile soils, with hardworking people…Louise and I were amazed to see pyrethrum for the first time, growing in a garden’, Solange emphasised, pointing at the third leader, before captivating the entire team with her proposal.

It runs thus, "Here is how our generation will make its own contribution to Rwanda and African in general. The independence generation played their part, and where the need arose, the liberation generation came in to restore hope to the people, so today the turn is ours. After all, circumstances are not as uncertain as it was for the liberation generation. We can take advantage of what they established, and we also play our part.  Let’s start from Musanze to create a success model, which can be replicated elsewhere in Rwanda, East Africa and Africa. Only then will our being young and educated have relevance to the people of Rwanda and Africa. We will call our strategy ‘The Musanze Model’.

This model will be spearheaded and implemented by the youth, leading the community into self-empowerment, and propelling the entire country and, later, continent into prosperity. The core champions of this transformation will be the youth after high school, before joining university, with input from the TVET graduates and the community.

"We will have a two-year apprenticeship of practical and soft skills for everybody, with a curriculum that will be a hybrid of Rwanda’s Itorero, Umuganda and Umudugudu settlement programme; Tanzania’s Jeshi la Kujenga Taifa; Kenya’s National Youth Service; Costa Rica’s EARTH University; Ghana’s University of Development Studies; Nigeria’s Covenant University and Malaysia’s Oil Palm Scheme’. The ideology and practice from these pacesetters will make a winning hybrid curriculum to propel and mission.”

The Musanze Model

"The Musanze Model for rural transformation will focus on planned, affordable, community-led and owned rural human settlement,  picking  from the Umudugudu settlement programme, with the attendant social services. In the Musanze Model, we will ask government for three key inputs, namely machinery and tools, land and long term investor guarantee, preferably a local housing cooperative.

"The machinery (both industrial and artisanal) will be for excavating and shaping the volcanic stones into blocks for construction; the land is for the sites of the midugudu while investment guarantee is for the investor who will finance the project components that need finances. The spine of the model will entail the investor and the champions putting up skeletal structures for five-storey apartment blocks using the volcanic stone blocks as the core material.

"The community and the TVET graduates will then do the finishing, contributing skilled and unskilled labour, Umuganda style. Occupancy and ownership will be allocated in order of priority, as judged by the community itself. The occupants will own the individual apartments, paying for the financial value of the project over 15-20 years. In the course of the two-year apprenticeship, the champions will earn a stipend from their efforts, which will contribute to their tertiary education fees.

"You see, this is an opportunity for us to be relevant to Rwanda and Africa. The older generations handled the challenges of their day; we must handle ours, as well. Sibyo?”

The author is a partner at Peers Consult Kampala and CET Consulting, Kigali.

bukanga@yahoo.com