Entrepreneurship in Rwanda: We are our own worst enemies

“Every morning my mother would tell me that a certain uncle had gotten me a job and all I said was that I don’t need to work for anyone. Three months down the road I still didn’t have anything tangible to show. They started thinking I was mad and disobedient, they even called for family meetings to talk to me...Now that I am a great success, people have realised just how much my perseverance wasn’t in vain. My monthly income is 10 times higher than any of the jobs I was offered and I am now creating jobs and not working for someone”- Ildephonse Mungwarakarama, House of Technology Founder. THIS IS a quote from one of the most interesting articles on self-employment I’ve ever read – in this very paper last week. Titled ‘Treading the unpredictable path of self-employment’, the piece tried to highlight the very important issue of the hurdles people face when attempting to become entrepreneurs. What I took from this article was that, instead of blaming high taxes, high interest rates from commercial banks and poor schools for our lack of thriving businesses, we had only ourselves to blame.As one poor fellow told the writer, his former fiancée left him because she thought that his dream to be self-employed was “unserious”. I think that the saddest part of the article was when a parent was quoted giving his reasons why he wouldn’t support his child’s dream. “My youngest son graduated at the age of 24 and because he has watched too many movies including documentaries about the likes of Bill Gates, he thought he could also start his own company! His grades were good enough to get him a first class job in many big companies. Why would I let him drown in shame chasing unrealistic dreams?” he said.It seems to me that while the government and NGOs spread the message of self-employment, young people are getting an altogether different message from everyone else. Instead of encouragement, they have to handle negativity and lack of support. Sadly, for every pro-entrepreneurship REAL FINA Entrepreneurship Award (Herve Twishime’s year-old Paniel Meat Processing company won last week’s competition) there are countless more anti-business messages that are spread insidiously throughout the year.These messages, which are anti-entrepreneurship, start, I believe, from the very beginning of our children’s life. Just ask the average child what they want to be in the future and bet that the vast majority say that they want to become lawyers, engineers and doctors. Our school system only makes this worse, especially with the rote education that we still use that rewards those who regurgitate the teachers’ notes rather than those who employ critical thinking. And those who ‘stubbornly’ refuse to toe the line and join the employed class have to deal with unsupportive support systems at home. While I loathe being one of those people who blame colonialism for everything that befalls us, I believe that our attitudes to business are grounded in it. The Belgians educated Rwandans (no matter how miserly the number) NOT to become creators of wealth but rather to become the cogs of colonial rule. They were the clerks and junior-level administrators who made colonialism feasible. By the time we became independent, all we knew to do was sit in offices and manage other people’s affairs and money. Sadly, little has changed. But change it must if we are to leave the mire of poverty we find ourselves in.First of all, we must recognise our own negative mentalities where business is concerned. Unless we face this head-on and learn to be encouraging we will go nowhere fast. A few days ago, I was talking to a Zimbabwean friend of mine about our countries’ attitudes to business and came to this conclusion; while Westerns are quick to encourage their friends and family in both word and actions, our countrymen’s usual reaction to a business idea were more often than not wholly negative. “You did not study that in school”. “Where will you get money”? “First get a degree in business”!...the negativity goes on and on. Honestly, if we look at all the hurdles our business owners have to jump; it’s a miracle that we have a nascent business class at all.So, instead of thinking that Bill Gates-ish success is an anomaly that is beyond Rwandans, it’s time we understand that all he was, was a man with an idea. Luckily, an idea that was allowed to flourish. Can you imagine what would’ve happened if he was born here? I doubt that we would have allowed Microsoft to see the light of day. We cannot allow that to keep happening. We’ve already lost too much already.The author is a New Times journalist currently pursuing a post-graduate degree

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Entrepreneurship in Rwanda: We are our own worst enemies