The Kigali Peace Marathon needs a better strategy

THE LAST two weeks have been great for Kigali and indeed Rwanda. First we hosted the Kigali Peace Marathon and more recently we had an even bigger event; the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the African Development Bank (AfDB). These are the kind of events that everyone loves. They raise our profile as a people and in the process line our pockets and are good for the economy. Marathons are great. Apart from raising a city’s profile and injecting resources into its economy, they are a fun-filled day off for the whole city. You get to see some people you have not seen in ages and run/walk to some places you have always imagined can only be reached by vehicles. The jewel in my crown this year is when i got to meet and make friends with a top athlete who came in second. I now have a superstar friend in athletics. We thank the organizers and the sponsors or the marathon for the good work done. It was a good effort. However there are a few things that they could improve on. Kigali on Sunday is a relaxed place. It seems like a good day to have a marathon, right? Seemingly the truth is different. To explain I will use an example. A few Sundays back, I encountered a visitor to Kigali who had lost her travel documents and was due to travel the very next day. They did not know where to start. Putting myself in her shoes, I offered to take her to the nearest police station where she would get a police abstract to start her off on getting emergency travel documents. It seems straight forward, until she indicated that she did not have passport size photographs. It took us three hours and a trip from town to Sonatube to get a photographer who was open and working. We moved from a closed shop to a closed shop. The point is that Rwandans are fairly religious people and if the Marathon wants to have effective public participation, then they have to consider this fact. But perhaps the problem was not the day of the marathon. After all, since the marathon involves blockading various roads, then the least active day means least interference to the city’s business. This is where the issue of sponsorships and more especially advertisement of the event come in. The Kigali Peace Marathon needed very good and effective advertising. This did not happen. Indeed, I have friends who like running who did not know about the marathon and thus did not attend. There was no consistent message on the marathon. The running gear was a very telling testimony to this. MTN sponsored this and so the colour and the messages were MTN’s. There is no problem with this. The problem is in the fact that there was no message on the Kigali Peace Marathon of 2014...nada! This is a serious oversight. The -shirts are proud mementos for those who run in the marathon and the fact that they say nothing about the event is almost criminal. The marketing of the Kigali Peace Marathon should be better and the brand should be built and protected. The prize money should be known before hand and please try to raise it. Kigalians have very little running culture. To get then to come and run on the road on a cold Sunday morning will require a very valid reason. The marathon is dubbed a ‘peace’ marathon. But how running the marathon achieves peace is not clear to the individual runner. The standard Chartered Nairobi Marathon seems to have achieved this. The proceeds go towards aid of visually impaired persons through paying for surgeries and surgical equipment for the same. This has gotten Nairobians out in their thousands in an even colder city. Lastly, the Kigali Peace Marathon website needs a serious overhaul. It is bland and looks like an afterthought. One hopes that with all the pomp and colour that is the Kigali Peace Marathon, the photos would find their way into the website. This would really spice it up. It could also be made more interactive and hopefully registration be done online. The comments above do not take away the fact that we are proud of the organizers of the Marathon. Kudos...but get better, at it. Sam Kebongo is an entrepreneurship Development Consultant based in Kigali.