Blog

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda has joined other Heads of states and government representatives from across the globe for the Fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness at the Bexco convention centre in Busan, Korea.

Local Korean press reports that approximately 2000 delegates are meeting at the convention including those from developing and donor countries, parliamentarians, civil society organisations and private sector representatives.

The convention that began today 29 November will conclude until 1 December 2011.

Delegates are reviewing global progress in improving the impact and value for money of development aid and make new commitments to further ensure that aid helps reduce poverty and supports progress in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

The objectives of the convention include; assessing global progress in improving the quality of aid against the agreed commitments; Sharing global experiences in delivering the best results;

And, Agreeing on a Busan Outcome Document to further enhance efforts globally and within countries to make aid more effective in reducing poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

The EAC Summit Chairperson and President of Burundi Pierre Nkurunziza has opened the first-ever Lake Tanganyika Basin Development Conference in Bujumbura, Burundi.

President Nkurunziza extended an invitation to investors urging them to come and invest in the Lake Tanganyika Basin.

“I would like to make a pressing appeal to potential investors, those of EAC, COMESA, SADC, The United States of America, China, Japan, Europe, India and elsewhere to come and invest in the Lake Tanganyika Basin,” Nkurunziza said.

The EAC-organized conference themed Unlocking the Overflowing Trade and Investment Opportunities in the Basin, is taking place at the Hotel Source du Nil and Roca Golf Hotel from 28-29 November 2011.

The two-day event is meant to harness the potential for trade, investment and socio-economic development in the Basin, and the President was quick to assure investors that the region was ready for investment.

“They can count on us for guarantees and facilities for their investments,” the EAC Summit Chair declared in his keynote address. The Head of State enumerated the vast opportunities that exist in the tourism, transport, agriculture and mining sectors, among others.

“It (Lake Tanganyika Basin) is inhabited by a population of over twenty million. It has a huge potential in water, including Lake Tanganyika and its basin, that we could operate effectively and efficiently to produce electrical energy needed to ensure industrial development in the region,” Nkurunziza said.

“The Basin is also an area of high agricultural potential, producing palm oil, sugar, fruits and vegetables of high quality, to name but a few,” he added.

President Nkurunziza noted that the creation and improvement of port infrastructure in the Basin to boost transport would open up the region and accelerate integration, especially as the Basin is shared by the three regional blocs of EAC, COMESA and SADC, which have already formed a Tripartite framework to foster cooperation.

Burundi’s Minister for EAC Affairs Hon. Hafsa Mossi on her part described the Lake Tanganyika basin as well as that of Lake Victoria as potential food baskets for the EAC region and observed that on account of their trans-boundary nature, lakes Tanganyika and Victoria call for cooperation among their riparian countries in the rational utilization of their resources, including conservation and protection of their delicate ecosystems.

The Secretary General of the East African Community Amb. Richard Sezibera similarly highlighted the lake’s potential as an important tourism and transport hub of the EAC region, saying it could be useful for linking goods transported by rail from Dar es Salaam through Kigoma, the DRC through Kalemie, and from the SADC region through Mpulungu in Zambia.

“This capacity can not be overstates because the lake Tanganyika basin is rich in minerals, and has very fertile soils,” Amb. Sezibera asserted.

Among the subjects being discussed at the conference include the sustainable exploitation of the natural resource base within the Lake Tanganyika Basin; state of play and role of public private partnerships (PPP) in infrastructural development in the region; and the role of ports and inland waterways in regional integration.

The forum will also focus on revitalization of the rail network in the region; enhancing Information Communication Technologies for service economy; oil and gas exploration activities on Lake Tanganyika; as well as energy alternatives for productive use to improve income generation in Lake Tanganyika basin.

EAC Heads of State HE Mwai Kibaki of Kenya; Paul Kagame of Rwanda; Jakaya Kikwete of the United Republic of Tanzania; Yoweri Museveni of Uganda; as well as HE Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo and HE Michael Sata of Zambia are scheduled to take part in an interactive Heads of State session of the Lake Tanganyika Basin Development Conference on Tuesday afternoon, to be moderated by Mr. Jeff Koinange. DR Congo and Zambia are the other countries that share Lake Tanganyika with Burundi and Tanzania.

The EAC Secretariat in collaboration with the Republic of Burundi as the host country and Lake Victoria Basin Commission (LVBC) are organizing the conference with the support of the EAC Partner States, Lake Tanganyika Authority (LTA), Trade Mark East Africa, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and East African Business Council (EABC).

Rwanda’s successful entrepreneur of Entreprise Urwibutso Sina Gérard has been awarded an International Quality Crown 2011.

This recognition is based on the criteria of the QC100 quality model, implemented in over 100 countries, and will be sponsored by ImarPress with 26 publications.

The annual International Quality Crown Convention took place on November 26th and 27th, 2011 in Great Britain, in the Guoman Tower Hotel Convention Hall of London. Companies from 74 countries gathered to receive the International Quality Crown Award.

Business leaders presented their companies for an international audience and participated in conferences regarding quality case studies in companies in search of quality and excellence.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that HIV infects 50% of young generation between 15 and 24 years, which meant between 5000-6000 new infections every day across the world.

According to Rwanda Biomedical Center (RBC); the same age group HIV prevalence is estimated to be at the rate of 1.0% which is relatively lower than many other countries.

This figure varies from 1.5% among women to 0.4% among men. This means that 380 women in this category are infected over every 100 men.

The updated statistics were released Monday 28, 2011 by RBC during a press briefing a head of three months World Aids Day campaign which will be launched on Dec. 1, this Thursday.

Speaking to the press, Dr. Anita Asiimwe the Deputy Director General of RBC said that according to the behavioral studies among youth in Rwanda, the proportion of young men and women aged 15-24 years who have had sex, the number increased from 34% to 39% among young men and from 20 to 26% among young women between the year 2006 and 2009 respectively.

The study show different factors as lack of knowledge about HIV/AIDS, lack of educating and life skills, poor access to health services and commodities, early sexual debut, early marriage, sexual coercion and violence.

Others include human trafficking and growing up without parents or other forms of protection from exploitation and abuse among others has been behind the cause.

Asiimwe said the number in Rwanda was still low compared to other countries in the region and that the government intends to reduce it more to zero point.

“Prevalence in the youth is low in Rwanda and we want to fight new infections to zero maximum,” Asiimwe said.

After the launch, the campaign will be done in different folds, sensitizing youth, in and outside the schools on comprehensive knowledge about HIV/AIDS, and encouraging parent-child dialogue on sexual reproductive health.

Others will include empowering young girls and boys to negotiate safe sex, raise awareness for young people on HIV transmission and sex work, mobilizing the community to provide youth friendly services including availability and accessibility of condoms, carry out VCT activities targeting the youth and educating the general population on HIV prevention among others.

Ends

The Nyarugenge court of first instance is slated to try in absentia Nelson Gatsimbazi the Editor-in-chief of Umusingi vernacular tabloid.

In the case Gatsimbazi is allegedly accused of propagation of Discrimination and divisionism punishable by law and subject to the provisions of articles 33, 34 of the constitution of the Republic of Rwanda.

“They fixed a date for my trial saying I was nowhere to be seen in the country. All they wanted was to arrest me and detain me,” Gatsimbazi told Igihe.com late Monday.

However, Gatsimbazi further explained that his lawyer earlier appeared in court to represent him to prove to them that they (prosecution) actually planned to arrest and detain his client. They wanted to try me in absentia, yet I was around and they hadn’t informed me that I had a case to answer.

If found guilty, Gatsimbazi is likely to serve a sentence of between one and five years in jail, and pay cash of between Frw500,000 and Frw2million or one of the two sentences.

Meanwhile a local online publication reported that Gatsimbazi is allegedly holedup in Sweden for an unknown duration.However, Gatsimbazi neither confirms nor denys about his present location. On insistance, Gatsimbazi told Igihe that he is in the United Kingdom where he is studying Journalism.

Recently he alleged that his tabloid’s editorial Line had been hijacked and switched to a different editorial line by Stanley Gatera his elder brother currently managing the tabloid.

Gatera told local press that he will not suspend operations of the tabloid despite requests by Gatsimbazi to Media High Council (MHC) to suspend the tabloid operations until further notice.

“We had agreement before Gatsimbazi left the country. The deal was that I would fund the operation of the tabloid. So if he wants to terminate the agreement, let him come and we sit again and see the way forward” Gatera earlier told a local online publication.”

Gatsimbazi contacted the MHC through an email bearing no signature but later accompanied the email with a phone call asking the MHC authorities to suspend the tabloid temporarily.

The National Public Prosecution of Rwanda has announced that it has new evidence implicating Paul Rusesabagina a Rwandan living in exile popularly known for the Hotel Rwanda film.

In a statement signed by Alain Mukurarinda the spokesperson of national Public prosecution, the new evidence implicates Paul Rusesabagina including other Rwandans living in the United States that have been providing support to FDLR terrorist organization currently based in the DR-Congo. The support comprises of various equipment and other kinds of help.

Prosecution says with this new evidence now available, its ready to present the new evidence to judicial institutions of countries including Belgium, USA where Rusesabagina operates and also in Rwanda.

Members of the Parliamentary Accounts Committee (PAC) have urged the ministry of local government to strengthen reforms in the Vision 2020 Umurenge Program aimed at assisting vulnerable people.

Reacting to the auditor general’s report 2009-2010, the PAC parliamentarians chaired by Juvenal Nkusi, grilled the MINALOC permanent secretary Cyril
Turatsinze and his colleagues on the uncountable funds in the project.

However, journalists were denied the statistics. “We are still verifying the figures,” he said.

Meanwhile during the four hour Question and answer session , Turatsinze agreed that a good number of things didn’t go as expected during the program’s inception.

He noted that financial institutions at the local level for example refused to work jointly with MINALOC in issuing credit to those who had promising projects. Hence the project was integrated to Ubudehe a fund used to support common community activities. “The banks were afraid to take the risk that’s why we had to come up with another option”

“Most of the beneficiaries were living in extreme poverty and didn’t have collateral as a requirement for them to get credit but since our aim is to help them we gave them the credit with agreements on how they will pay but it’s unfortunate that some didn’t respect the agreement,” he pointed out.

“However, there have been measures to reduce the non performing loans; they now stand at 50%.”

Also there are those who took credit with specific projects but later changed to cheaper ones in order to save some amount. Others took the loans as a group and later divided the amount amongst them a fact that affected the accountability process.

Illiteracy and lack of awareness also complicated the process, “can you imagine some people were not aware of the bank account to pay the loan and rather deposited in their own accounts thinking by doing so they were paying back the loans,” Turatsinze remarked.

Also some leaders of cooperatives swindled the funds; in Ruganda sector a similar cooperative dealing with agriculture produce was left stuck after their leader ran away with the funds.

This behaviour is believed to be influenced by those who faked to be vulnerable yet they’re wealthy people who wanted to swindle the funds.

Lastly, evaluation of VUP funds was not done competently, that’s why a committee in charge of the program enforced reforms to strengthen the program.

Among the reforms, beneficiaries involved in agriculture activities are obliged to pay the credit within two years.

In terms of issuing credit, priority will be given to cooperatives since groups seemed disorganized. In addition the funds will be given in intervals to verify whether the amount was effectively utilized in each stage of their project proposal.

In regard to enhance transparency and evaluation the fund’s management, district offices will also oversee the implementation of various funded projects. The fund’s committee will be meeting monthly to review progress.

ENDS