PSCBS earmarks Rwf 1bn for capacity building

THE Public Sector Capacity Building Secretariat (PSCBS) has signed a two-year Memorandum of Understanding worth 1.3 million Euros (Rwf 1b) with four government institutions, to support and strengthen various local government empowerment projects. The agencies to benefit from the funds are the National Land Centre (NLC), the Rwanda Cooperatives Agency (RCA), the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR) and the Rwandese Association of Local Government Authorities (RALGA). According to PSCBS, their interventions will focus on the improvement of land management, service delivery in cooperatives, collection and monitoring of socio-economic data and benchmarking visits from districts to well performing districts. The funds are part of a donation PSCBS received from the Belgian government through the Belgian Development Agency, BTC. Speaking at the signing ceremony yesterday, the Executive Secretary of PSCBS, Stella Mugabo, said that the partnership will commit both PSCBS and the institutions to outline specific activities so that overlaps and misunderstandings can be avoided during implementation. “Under this understanding, we will support and train officials charged with implementation, such as officials in the NLC, so that they can comprehend the laws better and implement them perfectly in their design,” Mugabo said. She added that after several consultative meetings with the institutions, stakeholders decided to incorporate a mechanism of monitoring and evaluation, so that the institutions can tackle challenges as they come and also readily have available information to steer each initiative towards its goal. “We are working along with NISR to train people at the local government level to be able to collect quality and quantified statistical data,” Mugabo said. “Previously, we used to hire international consultants because we didn’t have enough human capacity, but with this training, we will be able to give Rwandans the capacity to carry out the surveys and provide the information necessary for the implementation of the projects”. Ends