Although Rwanda continues to perform well at maintaining safety and security for its people, the country has more to do to promote aspects of human development such are education, health, and social protection. This was observed in the latest national governance index released by the Rwanda Governance Board (RGB) on Friday, December 11. According to the Rwanda Governance Scorecard, among all the indicators gauged, ‘Investing in Human and Social development’ was the least performing pillar, for the third consecutive year. The pillar scored 73.32 per cent, below 80 per cent, considered the threshold for the best performing indicators, reflecting the dissatisfaction of people when it comes to investing in human development aspects. In fact, there has been dramatic poor performance when it comes to investing in human and social development. The performance was 82.41 per cent during the first edition of the report, and it continued to drop until the latest index. The education indicator, which assesses access to education, as well as strength and the quality of education, scored 76.34 per cent. Yet, for the country to achieve a knowledge-based economy that it desires, the government has a puzzle to improve the quality of education and strengthen the education system. Rwandans generally are still less satisfied with the quality of education acquired in the country (49.25 per cent), others are not satisfied with the school feeding programme (51.86 per cent). The same can be seen on the social protection indicator, which tracks the extent of investment in social protection programmes – the indicator scored the least (61.86 per cent). Only health, which looks at maternal and child health, prevention and control of diseases, as well as health system strengthening, performed better among other aspects. Its overall performance was 84.99 per cent, pointing to the fact that countrywide healthcare programmes such as community health workers and community health insurance services are making an impact. Still, the report recommends that it is important to increase facilities and systems that enhance access and quality of healthcare in order to achieve a quality and healthy population by 2024. The scorecard tracks the country’s performance in relation to her national, regional, and global governance commitments. “We do this because we want to hold ourselves accountable, be transparent, and also use the resources we have in the best interest of our citizens,” Usta Kaitesi, RGB’s chief executive said during the launch. According to the report, service delivery still performs below the target, despite the government prioritizing it as one of the key drivers of socio-economic transformation. For instance, citizen satisfaction with service delivery in the education sector was only 62.59 per cent, that of local administration performance was 67.7 per cent, and that of social welfare was 68.01 per cent. In the latest edition, the overall performance of the pillar is 78.31 per cent. Yet, it is clear that enhancing the quality of service delivery is a fundamental obligation of the government, private sector and all other service providers. To respond to the indicators that performed poorly, Samantha Diouf, the country director of Girl Effect suggests that it is important to look at how others were achieved in the first place. “Is it about a multi-sectoral collaboration approach, for example? And I think it’s mostly about partnerships,” the Vice-Chair of the Network of International NGOs in Rwanda noted. Diouf emphasized that in order to progress in whatever sector towards the national transformation, there is a need for partnerships. All not bad Majority of Rwandans feel safe and secure, at least at the rate of 95.44 per cent, according to results from the index. The seventh edition shows that the security and safety indicator remains the best performing pillar of all the indicators gauged by the board. Safety and security scored 94.29 per cent in the previous edition. The pillar measures the extent to which safety and security is provided, including personal and property safety, reconciliation, social cohesion and national unity, as well as how national security is safeguarded. Rwandans feel confident in the Rwanda Defence Force at the rate of 99.23 per cent, more than they do in the Rwanda National Police (90.88 per cent), according to the index. Nationally, citizens are satisfied with security at 96.89 per cent. When it comes to personal and property security, 87.10 per cent feel safe walking at night alone, while 81.90 per cent think their properties are secure, and 92.51 per cent feel satisfied with their personal security. Participation and Inclusiveness pillar attained the highest rate of improvement at 8.96 per cent in comparison with the previous edition. The improvement is attributed to the improvement in performance of the indicator of citizen participation, which scored 82.53 per cent up from 72.68 per cent in the previous edition. The improved performance is also attributed to the improvement of decentralization, which scored 87.52 per cent up from 64.62 per cent in the previous edition. Performance of local government scored 81.31 per cent against 70.70 per cent scored in the previous edition.
