Path towards poverty free Rwanda is now walkable

No doubt that the big news of the week and probably the entire year will be the latest statistics portraying a significant slash-down by 12 percent of Rwandans leaving below the poverty line. In only 5 years the number of Rwandans who might go to bed hungry reduced from 56 percent to 45 percent. Though figures still remain big, the good news is that the numbers are dramatically declining and will keep doing so. Incidentally, the launch of these reports found me in Musanze District, where as part of the heath sector, we have been designing our new 5 year strategic plan. As a coincidence, I came across two middle aged women during one of my evening walks, involved in a deep conversation. One woman was complaining about a deal where she was willing to pay Rwf5 million for purchase of some goods but the supplier or seller was insisting on Rwf7 million. She was very convinced that Rwf5 million is the amount coming out of her pockets and nothing beyond. This is not your usual urban woman with all sorts of jewelry hanging over her body or the ones we usually see driving the latest SUV models in Kigali. She was a typical village mother with a baby wrapped behind her back and seemingly rushing home to attend to family chores. As she vanished within the rush hour crowd, I kept asking myself how on earth an ordinary village woman would be talking about a deal in the range of Rwf5-7 million. I was astonished and simply wondered where this peasant would be getting such sums of money from. You see it takes me a great deal of negotiations including back-and-forth hassling with my bank to be able to be loaned such amounts. In most cases because the collateral I present is not very convincing, my requests fall on deaf ears. Again, this is money I cannot mobilize from my salary savings. But here was a village woman, walking and not driving, but comfortably talking about these sums as if it was mere pocket change. This incident only came to re-affirm what the day’s national story had been. That poverty is history in some sections of our rural community. Ten years ago, such a rural woman would be in a bitter state, either complaining about a drunken husband who has failed to pay tuition dues for the children or failed to provide medical care for their children. But the story has changed. Education is free, medical care insurance is a small fraction of household incomes and those who can’t afford, Government foots the bill. Therefore, as most basic expenses are taken care of by government, the focus shifts on an individual’s vision for a better future. Musanze is a bread basket for this country but, for many years, the ordinary person had never benefited much from the rich volcanic soils that guarantee a great harvest. Their agricultural output was small because farming was largely subsistence and practiced on fragmented pieces of land.Today, they have benefited enormously from land consolidation and other initiatives and the Northern Province, according to the EICV findings, is leading the country is reducing poverty numbers. Farmers are reaping big from their potatoes, smiling all the way to the banks. A Rwf5 million deal is insignificant to many in this part of the country, and yet we, in the Capital, an amount of this level is like manna sent from heaven. The trickle down advantages of this growth are quite many. The most important of all being a reduction in the numbers of young men and women flocking to cities from villages because money is no-longer an urban thing alone. For the past 10 years, Rwanda has been like a sketch board, designing numerous initiatives, some drawn from our own culture and others borrowed from elsewhere that have brought change in a fast way. The next phase of our development agenda will be a smooth one since the past years have been on finding which polices, programmes, home-grown solutions will quickly bring change. Now that these initiatives have been successful, the next step is building on the strong foundation to accelerate growth and development.If we stay the course, the next DHS or EICV reports coming in the next five years, that is 2017, will be the best send-off gift for the incumbent Head of State.

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Path towards poverty free Rwanda is now walkable