Effective today, my weekly column for the next ten weeks will be centred on what can be done to turn Rwanda into an active and winning nation as far as sports is concerned.For the past 12 years, Rwanda has been competing at top level international competitions and we have excelled at ‘participation’ and fell short on ‘winning’.The poor performance has always been caused by the lack of focus, plan or targets by responsible authorities in the country.To develop and transform sport in Rwanda, a plan that moves beyond quotas and doesn’t fixate on football, athletics, cycling, basketball and volleyball is needed.Rwanda needs to adopt a national sport development plan as soon as possible because quota system which has been counter-productive will never be productive in the country’s bid to have a successful sports sector.We need a single developmental theory for Rwanda in terms of what we want to achieve as a country, which at the present we don’t have.We can talk about everything else, but the fundamental problem is we don’t have a strategy.....and Rwanda is one of those countries that do not have a clear plan when it comes to sports development.More resources should be channelled to school sport as Rwanda can’t be able to produce quality athletes if development is neglected. Focus should be on the creation of training centres around the country for every discipline. Sports training centres, coupled with training of specialists are points of reference of the sport society, clubs and sports nucleus that are seeking to foment the regular and strong practice for sports spread and training.Training centres can also promote the participation of the community and help in grooming talent in the country. A proper and effective single development plan is thus required.There is too much focus on Rwanda’s five major sporting codes-football, athletics, cycling, basketball and volleyball. What happens in rugby, cricket, chess, golf, sport for the disabled, boxing, tennis, among others, appears to be “none of our business”.Our country’s sports have been affected by lack of a tangible sports development plan. There are so many factors that have led to the continuous poor show of our sports in general and the main reason has been the lack of clear focus from the Ministerial level down to clubs on the grassroots levels.Other factors hindering the development of sports include; poor planning, limited expertise in the area of sports management, limited sports facilities, lack of qualified, passionate, competent managers in the sports federations as well as clubs and inadequate marketing skills to attract some potential sponsors to take Rwandans sports to the next level.Lack of qualified coaches, lack of talent identification mechanisms, and lack of competitions at the grassroots level have also affected the growth of sports despite government’s interest and financial support. Despite the impediments, we need to follow a few reachable steps in order to revive Rwandan sports. In this manner, our sports can be enhanced gradually and be better than ever.First, the government must get kids involved in sports at an early age to make improvements. Sports in the country have stagnated over the years due to an apparent lack of participation from the younger generation.Nowadays, the mentality of our society focuses on the academic brilliance and neglects the sports development. It is important to bear in mind that people can succeed in both academic and sports. The youngsters can be excellent in both fields if they are given a chance by the parents to prove their abilities in sports. Therefore, parents must play a big role in encouraging their children to get involved in sports. Besides, the Sports Ministry should concentrate on discovering young talents by providing and hiring eligible coaches to train the kids at primary and secondary schools. If it is necessary, the foreign coaches should be imported to our country to address the issue of unprofessional and unskilled coaches. Next, the government should launch more big sports events to create a sporting culture and as platforms to find new talents. We should also find a mechanism to hold sports competitions widely because in that case, they will be no difficulties in finding the crème de la crème in the country sports arena to represent the country at the international level. Besides, the Sports Ministry must encourage the society to take part in sports events and make sports one enjoyable occasion for everyone. With that, they will know the importance and benefits their generation can gain for joining sports at the higher level. Totally, our sports will be so much better than before as the citizens become appreciative in the sports pitch.Finally, the government must upgrade the sports facilities in the sports complexes in all Provinces. Actually, the steps of upgrading and increasing the sports complexes in our country should have been done long time ago as there was nothing to worry about in terms of the impact to the Rwandan’s sports future. The athletes would be more inspired to achieve the goals when there are supports and contributions from the government with the building of the proper amenities that give conveniences to them.As we can clearly see, the country sports level is beyond our satisfaction. It is about time to change via implementing new prompt innovative suggestions as mentioned above. In conclusion, there are many incentives that we may stumble on to improve the standard of our country’s sports. All we have to do is to select the best ones and execute the chosen ones. Sport is something that contributes a lot to our country. Thus, we must give our utmost to launch the best efforts to developing this arena.
