Five years since the government last conducted a comprehensive audit into the performance of ‘Girinka Programme’, Auditor-General Obadiah Biraro has said that he has added it to the list of those to be considered for auditing this year.

He said this days after he presented his annual audit report where he raised fears that public funds amounting to over Rwf5.6 billion were either wasted or swindled during the 2019-2020 fiscal year.

Although the government audit conducted in 2016 was partly to investigate the magnitude of reported malpractices that marred the cattle-stocking scheme at the time, Biraro said that the performance audit will aim at ascertaining the real impact of the social protection programme.

Initiated in 2006 by President Paul Kagame, Girinka is a social protection programme designed to help the poor move above the poverty line and, by extension, impact the country’s economy.

In this programme, a farmer is given an in-calf heifer and is obliged to pass on the first female offspring to another program beneficiary who is selected by local administration authorities and validated by the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources.

Girinka has helped improve lives by fighting malnutrition, providing manure for farmland, improving income generation and contributing to the rebuilding of the country’s post-Genocide social fabric as more than 406,000 cows have exchanged hands since its inception.

About the audit

Biraro told The New Times that although Girinka has consistently been mentioned in his reports over the years, this will be the first time that it will be looked into comprehensively.

He reminded that although policies are put in place to help the masses, performance audits are done to look into whether there is value for the money invested.  

"You can get a clean audit opinion on financials, and then also find that a programme complied with all the laws, internal rules and procedures but what we are interested in is what all this has done to help the target masses,” he said.

 Why Girinka?

Biraro explained that programmes like Girinka are picked based on how people centred they are.

"When you look at the reports we do, we consider a connection to National Strategy for Transformation (NST1) and link it to the Sustainable Development Goals. We prioritise an audit based on the time we have plus urgency,” he said.

He reminded that just like countries like the US, a request for such an audit may come from Congress, the parliament in Rwanda can also do the same but no such formal request had been made although several MPs showed interest.  

Challenges registered

Although there has been progress, the program has been marred by allegations of misappropriation of cows by some local leaders, low productivity due to poor care or feeds and illegal sale of cows, among others.

In 2016, the Rwanda Agriculture Board (RAB) said that it had recovered 2,437 of the 5,141 Girinka cows that were irregularly distributed.

The Vice President of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Economy Odette Uwamariya said in an interview that there were still some loose ends in the program that needed to be tied.

"Assessment done in Bugesera district indicated that they were given cows that were not pregnant. This is contrary to the rules of this program that stipulate that a cow that is being passed on to the beneficiary should be at least four months pregnant,” she said.

The ‎Deputy Director-General in charge of Animal Resources Research and Technology at the Rwanda Agriculture Board (RAB); Dr. Solange Uwituze says that since 2018, the issues that had been raised in Girinka programme were fixed and the program is progressing smoothly.

"There is no cow that is bought through this program that is given to a beneficiary when it’s not pregnant. Since 2019, we have also worked hard to see that the cows are insured. The only challenge we have right now is that it takes a little longer for insurance companies to compensate those who lose their cows,” she said.

The government has so far invested Rwf33.2billion in the Girinka programme.