EDITORIAL: Umushyikirano sets the sky as the limit

The past week has been an eventful one; over 98 per cent of Rwandans came out and resoundingly approved a new constitution that seemed to cause more concern to non-Rwandans, but the people had the final say. Hardly had the referendum dust settled, the country’s leaders and stakeholders were taking part in the 13th edition of the National Dialogue Council (Umushyikirano), a meeting that has served as the country’s guiding light in surmounting various challenges and charting the way forward. The two-day event was not just another round of bureaucratic musings and fancy speeches by various leaders, but a day of reckoning, of reporting back to Rwandans on how they had fared in implementing chores given the previous year. Accountability may at first stick out as the main theme during Umushyikirano, but that is far from the main thrust: It is more about charting the next course and how to achieve set goals. Sometimes some of the goals fronted might seem a bit farfetched for the uninitiated, but that is how things are done here. Dreaming big has been this country’s worst kept secret, and it works. Already the latest Umushyikirano has laid down the next blueprint targeting the year 2050 but, most importantly, consolidating the gains of the last two decades is what will determine how to achieve the next goal. When Rwandans gave a massive YES in the referendum, they were in a similar mindset of continuing the momentum and having no limits of how far their dreams can go.

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EDITORIAL: Umushyikirano sets the sky as the limit