How about value addition for human resource

The month of August is almost gone and so is the election fever. It is good to see people getting back to their usual work schedules and not dragging on and on about the elections like is the norm in many other countries. The zeal to quickly return to work and move on with life seems to be a characteristic that Rwandans have nurtured to the level of an art. In the past, the President has urged fellow Rwandans not to be slaves of their history but to learn from it and forge ahead. It was therefore quite refreshing to see President Paul Kagame visiting a mineral processing plant at the beginning of the week, and giving a very worthwhile speech on value addition. The merits of value addition to goods meant for export are quite self explanatory. The export of goods in their form has always been one of the Sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest barriers to prosperity. A continent blessed with so much in natural resources has been condemned to poverty, largely because it only exports raw goods which after processing in Europe, China and North America, sell for so much more, thus making a joke out of our sweat. Actually, at one point the Ugandan president used this situation to allege that poor countries were the real donors, since they export cheap raw materials to the developed countries that then make a lot of money out of them after processing. President Kagame’s message was delivered at the commissioning of Roka Rwanda, a factory that adds value to minerals like Cassiterite, Wolfram and Coltan before the minerals are sold on the international market. While commending the investors, the president pointed out that value addition will be one of his areas of concentration in the next seven years. He hoped that other Rwandans or investors would learn a thing or two from this kind of investment and the philosophy behind it. This philosophy of value addition needs to be preached and spread throughout the country and possibly to other developing countries. Efforts have to be made to have value added to all products if we are to ever move forward and out of the poverty trap. Rwanda’s Vision 2020 programme, places a lot of emphasis on human resource development. The logic behind, being that since Rwanda is not that endowed with natural resources, it is strategic for the country to develop a dependable and competitive service sector. For this to happen, a lot of resources have been and continue to be directed towards creating a robust ICT industry and more importantly, improving on the education sector. I strongly believe that adding value to the academic products we produce is the best thing that can ever happen to a country. After all, sociologists long concluded that no country can be more developed than its education system. The cry for better customer services in the country, has dominated the press for quite sometime, but what is not brought out is the fact that poor customer relations are a symptom of a human resource that clearly lacks value addition. By investing in customer relations seminars or trainings a firm adds value to its staff. Therefore, apart from industrialisation aimed at adding value to raw materials, Rwanda must keep fine tuning its education sector to a level where quality and skilled graduates are produced. The efforts being put in the ICT sector will bear no fruits if our graduates are not able to use the internet to look for new knowledge. Spending time on Facebook and football websites is not of much value to our country. Every graduate should be able to point to a skill they have picked from school and not just go on talking about the certificates they have acquired. Employers and the country in general, are more interested in your skills and not your qualifications some of which may even be forged. Apart from what your certificate alleges, what else can you offer? If you have a degree in computer science, would you not be of more value if you could speak fluent English and French? Everyone can add value to themselves by learning more and since this a process that has no clear end, then we should all endeavour to keep learning. One of the best ways to add value to labour is through reading. More so, we need to develop a love for getting better by trying to learn from those who appear to be better than us. By the way, value added labour also commands better wages on the labour market. The creation of the East African Common market is another development that requires Rwandan human resource products to be more competitive on the labour market. This can best be achieved if they have the valuable skills needed by the wider community to compete with other East Africans. ssenyonga@gmail.com