While we are looking forward to and spending all our efforts into developing a volatile industry and business center, sadly companies like RWANDEX are being auctioned for sale. Our Sundaytimes’ front page had a disheartening headline concerning the liquidation of the defunct coffee export company RWANDEX Gikondo valued at Rwf 1 billion and its sister company RWANDEX Gisenyi at 700 million.

It is not enough that our steering industry, coffee is apparently doing badly but the reporter said that no bidder was interested to buy it at that price because it would take another 4 billion Rwf to get it back on its feet, considering the mess the company was in.

Yet the whole of last week all our paper seemed to publish was RWANDATEL’s poor customer care and mismanagement. Remember these are companies that are at the forefront of development and looked upon with hope to secure the nation from its misery of poverty and unleveled development.

Is it just the financial mistakes that are putting big investments like RWANDEX out of business or it is the small things that Rwandans overlook like good customer care and industriousness at work? 

If our latest public image is anything to go by, potential foreign investors may get cold feet or on the other extreme take advantage of our incompetence to drive us out of the market.

The media being the eye of the public, ours is not to judge or point fingers but to expose the flaws in any sector especially in the economy so they may be ironed out.

The government is doing all it can to create a conducive investment atmosphere and slowly entrusting the private sector to manage our economy but if the latter cannot prove its worth, then how do we expect to attain the economic standards of countries we are competing with in the EAC?

The Rwandan culture is quite hospitable and welcoming, shown by how we welcome visitors at our homes but unfortunately this is not so in business yet we are talking of profit making.

Look at Kenyan and Ugandan urban centers for instance; business is booming whether day or night because for them every second is a business opportunity.

We probably need to adjust our culture a bit from relaxing and enjoying life all weekend to making more money so as to get what to spend and keep ourselves in business.

Relaxing goes with spending and if we do not put in that extra effort to earn more, we will fail to pay the bank loans that are financing our businesses.

RWANDEX liquidation follows the company’s failure to clear its Rwf 3billion debt it owes several banks.

Ends