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An extensive world development report on Gender will be launched during the scheduled World Bank meeting to take place in Washington DC late this month.

The report which will be titled ‘Gender equality and development’ is expected to avail findings on how really Gender equality matters and a key development issue.

“The data in the forthcoming Gender report is going to boldly ascertain that Gender equality does really matter and a key development issue and what we are trying to do now is to come up with data that would at least put those things that we have all believed.”

“Development communities have believed that Gender equality matters, we always have the action plans but we never come up with a proof of why really this is important,” . Omomunmi Mimi Lapido, the World Bank Country Manager in Kigali said in interview with Igihe.com.

Ladipo said that the report is expected to address the kind of assets that women have which can make them productive.

She said that the report would really avail data which will help governments to create opportunities for women and increasing women’s opportunity in agribusiness, giving them access to technology market information, and make them access to mobile phones.

The World Bank technocrat also said it was important to help women have access to finance and governments to have laws in place to enable them have rights to inherit lands.

According to Ladipo, the report will give data which will make governments determine how to reduce female mortality in Africa generally.

“In the African region and Rwanda in terms of women endowment, the focus should be the need to work on reducing female mortality, there are far too many women still dying at child birth,” she said.

“We believe by focusing on all those areas, we will see the returns to growth and development. We would like to see how governments adopt the pro-Gender friendly policies and how do they streamline that into their development programmes,” Ladipo emphasized.

The regional Rusumo Hydroelectric Falls and Multipurpose Project is expected to increase power production in Burundi, Rwanda, and Tanzania by developing a common hydropower facility of 90 MW in the Kagera River Basin along with the associated transmission lines.

According reliable information availed to igihe.com, the project will also contribute to the community development near the project area through related social and environmental programs that might include watershed management, and improved access to electricity.

This was revealed during the 13th Project Implementation Committee (PIC) meeting that ended September 14, here in Kigali. The meeting had attracted experts from the three countries that will benefit in the project.

The investment costs for both generation plant and transmission lines is estimated to cost about U.S$340 million excluding compensation of families evicted and the project study will run until December this year.

Subsequent implementation and financing takes effect in 2012 while project implementation will set off in 2013 up to 2016.

The implementation committee (PIC) was preceded by the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) meeting which was held between September 12th -13th.

The advisory committee (TAC) assists the PIC in advising and supervising the preparation and implementation of the Rusumo project which is in essence, a Transboudary project, cooperatively developed and run by the three member countries within the Nile Basin Initiative framework.

While at the meeting, the implementation committee (PIC) discussed the progress made on the preparation of the Rusumo project and approved recommendations made by the TAC with regards to the development of project at Intermediate Development Scheme at 1323.5 meters above sea level.

On the Institutional and Financial arrangements, the PIC approved the strengthening of the project management unit at Nile Equatorial Lakes Subsidiary Action Plan (NELSAP) and gave a go ahead with the finalization of various project-related documentation.

Project Implementation Committee also announced the rotation in the chairmanship of the PIC and Burundi, which was holding the chairmanship handed over to Rwanda effective September 2011 for one year.

It is a tradition within NBI to rotate this position on an annual basis among Member States in alphabetical order.

The power plant that includes the construction of the dam is estimated to consume 1,100 hectares of Burundi’s land, 1,500 hectares on Rwanda, and 600 hectares of land in Tanzania.

Thousands of people will be evicted from the above chunks of land and will be resettled in other areas.

The World Bank Country Manager Omomunmi Mimi Ladipo has declined to give data pertaining unemployment in Rwanda.

Unemployment or jobs issues is one of the top priority item on the agenda to be discussed in the World Bank spring annual meeting to take place September 23-25 in Washington DC.

Ladipo was addressing the journalists from both public and private media in a press conference that took place at WB country office in Kigali.

“That one I know is an area with a lot of concern, attention and interest. We can’t and we are not yet in a position to give the specific data but this is what the government is looking at very closely-across the whole of Africa for example we know 7-10 million youth are coming up on Job market every year,”Ladipo said today.

“It is very significant proportion about our population and the expectations is that Rwanda is also somehow similarly impacted so I don’t want to go into data now, what we are trying to do in Rwanda is to pre-empt the possibility of it becoming a significant development issue,” Ladipo added.

She however said that the WB has supported social protection sector projects support aimed at making government to be in a position to provide employment and opportunities for youth in rural country side.

According to Ladipo priorities selected to be listed on the meeting’s agenda base on a combination of a lot of things driven by what is happening in the world giving an example of Jobs referring to what has been happening in the Middle East.

In April this year, Rwanda’s Minister of Public Service Anastase Murekezi the government was targeting to reduce unemployment rate to 4 percent from the current 8 percent in seven years through the formation of cooperatives.

According to the Minister, the working age group stood at 5.3 million with 670,000 still in school while public servants account for two percent representing 120,000 jobs.

It emerged that on average, between 100,000 and 140,000 new jobs are created per year out of a target of 200,000 new jobs by the year 2017.

While formal sector share of vacancies is 6.2 percent, the informal sector is said to dominate the employment industry with 93.8 percent.

Experts say unemployment currently stands at over 205 million worldwide which is the highest-ever recorded.

This year’s theme for the WB spring meeting is ‘Jobs, Gender and Climate change’ of which she said these affect different region differently and they don’t carry the amount of emphasis.

The meeting allows number of lectures, talks and seminars aimed at information sharing across countries and number of cooperate events are organized with Africa region specific events.

“There is accountability of one side done on the other side. It is about what we’ve been doing and about what we see as possible changes in policy direction. Basically to pick back what they think we should be doing and what we are not doing, if they think we have been doing things we shouldn’t have done they would tell us and if they think we have been doing more of a certain things they would also tell us,” Ladipo enlightened about the meeting.

On Rwanda’s context, Ladipo said that the meeting will focus mainly on how WB can continue supporting Rwanda to generate electricity to attain her target of 1000 megawatts by 2017, private sector development and how to support Secretary General Dr. Richard Sezibera’s plans at EAC secretariat.

The Rwandan delegation will be led by John Rwangombwa the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning and Rwanda’s Central Bank Governor Claver Gatete.