Seven Rwanda projects up for Belgian funding

Seven Rwandan projects have been selected from a pool of 48 projects that were submitted in Rwanda for funding from Belgian funded, Migration for Development in Africa (MIDA) Great Lakes Programme. This was revealed during the second National Steering Committee meeting of the fourth phase of the programme at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation headquarters. The progamme that operates in Burundi, DRC and Rwanda will benefit projects in education, rural development and health to the tune of Euros 3.8m in the three countries.The national MIDA coordinator, Eugene Kandekwe, said that out of an initial 48 submitted projects, only seven have been selected. The seven institutions whose projects are likely to tap into this fund include KIE, KIST, ISAE, CHUK and Ndera hospitals. MIDA is a regional project that seeks to respond to the brain drain phenomenon in African countries through the creation and strengthening of sustainable links between the Diaspora and their countries of origin. “We are now in the phase of final approval of the final project documents – we managed to get only seven projects which are well written and in few of them, there are still few things to collect,” Kandekwe said. “We wanted more because as much as you get in terms of numbers of projects, then you maximize the chance to have very good ones selected – we wanted to have many projects so that we may have many possibilities.” The fourth period of implementation started in 2008 and ends in 2012. Ends