Editor,

RE: "Made in Rwanda should eye bigger market” (The New Times, December 13).

In my view, this suggestion does not apply to every product. There are many things we can manufacture ourselves without first needing those extremely highly qualified product developers imported from somewhere. Many products we are consuming do not need advanced research and development and clothing manufacturing is one of them.

Mr Agutamba suggested, for example, that we should have our embassy in Turkey find out who makes these suits he saw at M. Peace Plaza and invite them to Rwanda to establish industries manufacturing the same material. The writer should know that those foreigners will most likely not be manufacturing for our local market but for export.

Making suits, trousers, shirts and shoes, etc does not really require a lot of research and development. For example, we already have Rwandans who can make sound business plans, we also have some fashion designers who are really experts in their field but their companies are in infancy stages and still struggling and likely to stay so for quite a long time.

Why can't the Ministry of Industry encourage them to form partnerships and even help them set up companies that can manufacture clothing on large scale? First, for the local consumption and, later, for export.

We will not achieve our objective of having "zero chagua” in East Africa if we don't invest in our own people who already have skills and help them set up large-scale clothing manufacturing and other products such as shoes for our local market.

Do not expect foreign companies to focus their production on our local market. We can invite several foreign companies to set up manufacturing firms in Rwanda — who will definitely create jobs — but if they are not producing for the local market, our import bill will continue to soar as we might even end up importing the same products made in Rwanda.

Nigeria produces a lot of oil, enough to meet local consumption needs and export some, yet they still import a lot of oil, probably the same oil dug from their own soil.

Seth