Editor,

I read, with excitement, a story about a group of 1000 women from Kigali City, under the auspices of Agaseke Project, who started three-month training in how to weave baskets and venture into income generating activities.

This effort by KCC must be supported because training many women in income generating projects will help millions of poor Rwandans defeat poverty on their own.

I believe this is a good approach in the fight against chronic poverty as empowering women economically can help eradicate poverty in their families. Largely, the government’s role should be to provide an enabling environment, and once this is in place, households can overcome poverty.

In my view poverty is like a lion and its individual’s responsibility to stand up and fight it.

It’s, therefore, important to train women and to create avenues for ordinary people to access loans. Of course, accessing these loans, making profits and servicing the loan have been some of the biggest challenges. However, with proper training, I believe women will succed, since they will have acquired the necessary skills.

Ronald Kayinamura
Huye