Due to the recent entry into the East African Community, Rwanda has been swept over by a wave of professionals in various domains.

This has sparked a healthy competition between various service providers, creating an effective service delivery system to clients by developing customer-tailored solutions to improve performance.

With the critical need to address the inadequacy of professionalism, Management Training and Consultancy on how best to treat a customer, has also subsequently taken centre stage.

At one of such workshops where over 15 workers from different institutions were trained on Customer Care, Sunday Times’ Sam Nkurunziza caught up with Vianney Shumbusho. He is a Management expert and the Director of Inspire Management Institute (IMI).

When Shumbusho starts to speak of his most profound passion, he stresses the need to counteract the scarcity of skills which was the driving force behind the vision to start IMI.

The passion with which he talks clearly indicates a man who finds pride in the economic empowerment of other people.

According to Shumbusho, IMI seeks to equip Rwandans with improved skills in Management and Leadership, Economics, Finance, Human Resources and Information Systems.

It has this month partnered with Service Quality Institute (SQI) from Minneapolis, USA, in developing innovative customer service towards customers in Rwanda.

But like most Rwandans, Shumbusho’s childhood was marred by the effects of his country’s horrible history. He remembers with melancholy how at 9 years of age (October 1961), he was forced to leave Rwanda and become a refugee.

"I had only completed my fourth primary grade , when our family was forced to flee to Tanzania and we did not return until after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi,”

Shumbusho says with apprehension and angst written all over his face.

Whilst in exile, Shumbusho attended secondary schools in Tanzania and Uganda, Universities in Ethiopia and Kenya. Evidently, the East African in him is much more than what meets the eye.

He attained a Bachelors Degree with Distinction in Management, Economics and Accounting from Addis Ababa University in 1980 and a Masters Degree in Business and Administration (MBA) from the University of Nairobi four years later.

The former Deputy Chief of Staff at the African Union Commission was also a Senior Civil Servant in the Rwandan Government of National Unity for 9 years.

Shumbusho became adviser to the Minister in the Ministries of Rehabilitation and Social Integration, as well as Youth and Cooperatives in 1995 and then Director of Cabinet in the Ministry of Public Service in 1996 up to 1997.

"I also worked at the Rwandan Embassy in Pretoria where I promoted economic cooperation between Rwanda and Southern African countries as well as following closely the NEPAD Programme whose secretariat is at Midrand near Pretoria.”

From October 1997 to June 2000, while Executive Secretary for the Privatization Secretariat, Shumbusho implemented the country’s privatization programme and presided over the sale of public enterprises and prepared Rwandatel, Electrogaz and some Tea Factories for eventual privatization.

A former Auditor in Addis Ababa, and Management Consultant in Nairobi and Mombasa providing services in financial management, training, syndications and feasibility studies, he has undoubtedly understood that customers are four times more likely to take their business elsewhere because of poor customer service than due to high prices.

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