The National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) has incorporated a component of population control measures in the national schools’ syllabus as one of the government’s strategies to aggressively decelerate the country’s population growth rates.

Augustin Gatera, the Centre’s Director of Languages and Humanities unit said NCDC recently acquired fundings from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFP) for the purpose.
"Some of the money will be used to train teachers on reproductive and population control and see how they can integrate them in their lessons and extra curricula activities,” he said.

According to statistics, the population of Rwanda is growing at a rate of 3.2 percent annually and is expected to hit 16 million by 2020 up from the current10 million. 

The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, said that several government organs have combined efforts to address the issue of rapid population growth.

She added that the Ministry of Health was putting emphasis on establishing family planning facilities easily accessible to Rwandans, which has seen family planning methods increase from four percent in 2000 to 37 percent.

"We have made sure that family planning facilities are accessible at every health unit across the country,” she said.

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