GASABO - The Ministry of Education is set to benefit from the Geographic Information Systems (GIS), a geographic ICT infrastructure dealing in mapping, statistical analysis and surveying.

This was revealed Tuesday by the State Minister for Primary and Secondary Education, Theoneste Mutsindashyaka, during the closing session of a one-week training of 15 students in mapping and analysing land use, electricity consumption and water distribution in Kinyinya village.

The training was organized by the Environment System Research Institute (ESRI).

During his speech, the Minister underscored that there are many potential benefits the education sector is set to get from GIS.

"The GIS infrastructure is one of those innovations we really need in our sector. It’s both an education and development tool which if sufficiently adopted will even step up our ICT programme since it’s also digitally packaged,” said Mutsindashyaka.

The minister added that they are planning to spread this system to all the 800 secondary schools in the country. 

"There are many GIS projects coming up soon in our schools through our workings with RITA, and we have already trained one hundred teachers in this system, through the teachers-training-teachers approach,” noted the minister.

He added that on top of planning to start up a Master’s degree in surveying, due to the overwhelming need for the programme, they are planning to incorporate GIS into the one laptop per child, so that primary pupils can also learn it.

Michael Sittard, the Chief Executive Officer of ESRI, the GIS implementing agency in Rwanda, he said ESRI is "very enthusiastic about working with the Ministry of education, and looks forward to working with other sectors.”

"We see a small and astonishing country coming up, and the fact that Rwanda has demonstrated good strides in developing capacity, we look forward to partnering in this sector and other related fields in line with what we do,” said Sittard.

The students who were trained in this ICT-related geographical short course said they had learnt a lot due to its practical nature.

"We have been studying maps in class, but not knowing the practical part for instance how to do the measurements, and the general relevance for the betterment of the environment, but now we can make sense out of it,” said Jean Bosco Sibomana, one of the participants.

The training was conducted in partnership with the National Land Centre, which promised to offer jobs to the trained students in case they need any manpower in the covered areas.   

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