Tag: HomeNews

The World Bank flagship report on Gender equality and development released in Washington DC estimates an alarming figure of 3.9 million women that die every year in low and middle income countries.

According to a press release posted onto the Word Bank website, the world development report 2012 ‘Gender Equality and Development’ indicates the worst disparity of the rate at which girls and women die relative to men in developing countries.

The report suggests that about two-fifths are never born due to a preference for sons, a sixth die in early childhood, and over a third die in their reproductive years.

It calls for nations’ concerted efforts to empower women to achieve economic development indicating that Gender equality matters and also smart economics.

“Countries that create better opportunities and conditions for women and girls can raise productivity, improve outcomes for children, make institutions more representative, and advance development prospects for all,” the report reads in part.

However, the report suggest that lives of women around the world have improved dramatically making unprecedented gains in rights, education, health, and access to jobs and livelihoods.

Even though there is a notable progress in the lives of women, there are still gaps to be bridged that need policy makers’ attention, the report suggests.

According to the report, four priority areas have been identified for domestic policy action including reducing excess female mortality and closing education gaps , improving access to economic opportunities and limiting the reproduction of gender inequality across generations

While domestic policy action is crucial, the Report calls on the international community to complement efforts in the four priority areas and also support evidence-based public action through better data, impact evaluation and learning.

The analytical core of the Report focuses on the roles of economic growth, households, markets, and institutions in determining gender differences in education and health, agency, and access to economic opportunities.

According to the report, the number of female mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa increased to 1.18 million in 2008, compared to 639,000 in 1990.

So as the problem of girls who die during infancy and early childhood, the report calls for greater investments in adequate water, sanitation and waste disposal services.

It also suggest that lowering maternal mortality will require systemic improvements to the institutions that deliver medical care and services to expectant mothers.

“We need to achieve gender equality, over the past five years, the World Bank Group has provided $65 billion to support girls’ education, women’s health, and women’s access to credit, land, agricultural services, jobs, and infrastructure,” said World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick.

“The road to achieving the Millennium Development Goals in Africa can only be built on a gender inclusive agenda that unleashes the productive power of women,” said Obiageli Ezekwesili, World Bank Vice President for Africa.

“That agenda should advance women’s education and access to information, protect women’s rights, improve women’s access to agricultural inputs and security over their land, promote female entrepreneurship, and increase the participation of women in government and public life”. She added.

Christopher Bazivamo, Rwanda’s legislator at the East African Legislative Assembly has challenged ambitious youth to be patriotic, punctual and avoid selfishness to brighten their future.

Bazivamo said this during a Sunday Night live show where Tom Close and Kitoko featured as local music artists attracting a huge gathering.

“Every citizen must have a sense of duty in daily routine. You need to value your sense of duty are required and to fulfill, you first have to know what the duties are before implementing them.” He said.

The lawmaker urges youth to be smart in whatever they wish to accomplish since “you can’t pull off all your goals with no discipline.

“If it’s time for playing, reading, eating, do it at right time as it affects your mind system when you mix up things” he warned.

He lashed at the professional footballers saying some of them are more interested in minting money other than loving the career. “Rwandan football is like a lay where people conceal digging up money rather than loving the game, this pushes players to go where they can get money and sometimes they don’t play if not paid.”

“Seeking advice from different perspectives, to be acquainted with where things are wrong enables one t to improve. And to attain this you need to value and admire your workmates and the society which in turn generates positive outcomes to the society and awards you with trust at work,” he added.

The comments comes after FERWAFA officials resigned following the coach of Amavubi, apparently due to the poor performance that keeps the national team at the bottom of the continental football tournament.

Bazivamo argued Rwandan youth to develop career talents from villages, sectors, schools and districts more than recruiting from a broad.

He said that he likes local music and revealed that he a regular fan to Rugamba, Masabo and Impala due to the message their songs hold.

He lamented that the most shocking thing in his life, is when his wife and children were killed during 1994 Rwandan Tutsi Genocide “but after all that I strive to go on with my relatives to enjoy life”.

Christopher Bazivamo is presently an MP in EALA and before that, he was a Minister of land, Environment, Forestry, Water and Minerals, in 2003 and 2004 he was the Minister of Local Government, Community Development and Social Affairs.

In 2005 he was a Minister of Internal Security. In 2000, 2001 and 2002 he served as the Executive Secretary of the National Electoral Commission.

Preparations are under way to observe the annual International Day of Peace by commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and peoples due to Sept. 21.

This is enforced by Rwanda’s National Unity and Reconciliation Commission (NURC) together with other national and international stakeholders.

The day was recommended in 1982 by the United Nation (resolutions 36/37 and 55/282), and the UN’s theme for International Day of Peace this year says ‘make your voice heard’ under the overall idea of peace and democracy.

In Rwanda, over the past two years, the International Day of Peace has been organized and celebrated under the lead of the United Nations Office in Rwanda.

This year, the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission as her mandate of coordinating all activities related to peace and unity requires, has decided to take the lead of organizing and coordinating this year’s celebrations.

According to the press statement from the NURC; Peace Day provides an important opportunity for individuals, organizations and nations to create practical acts of peace on a shared date.

“It is a day for all people to come together in a spirit of hope and possibility, with a unifying spirit of Peace and unity. Peace Day is beyond politics, religion, race, nationality, class and all other dividers.”

Among other Rwandan peace activists; Dieudonné Munyanshoza in the interview with igihe.com said, “This is a day for us all to celebrate because nothing can be reached upon without peace.”

He challenged the public stating; “We need each other in all activities because we share different experiences in life and we can’t reach that target without togetherness. Let’s put together for peace to prevail in our country and outside the world.”

Kizito Mihigo, Mani Martin, Sophie Nzayisenga, Kitoko Bibarwa, Eduard Bamporiki, Alpha Rwirangira, Marc Nsengiyaremye Marc and many more will be present at Amahoro Stadium for presentations, performances and testimonies.

There have been unconfirmed reports about Lillian Kabaganza’s music career and her connections with Rehoboth choir which she once sung in. However, choir officials say there’s nothing wrong, to the extent that she is one of the artists Rehoboth loves and bestow support as she does to the choir.

In an interview with the gospel Time Show the choir leader says, despite the fact that kabaganza(above) organized some of her shows three times and Rehoboth ministries had prepared different concerts, Rehoboth did not do it intentionally, the grounds for that was no “appropriate communication flanked by them”

The choir leader assured kabaganza’s fans not to be anxious since Rehoboth is pleased to help Kabaganza throughout her album launch.

The choir has got some sources of income like a bus (coaster) which facilitates them in transportation but also the members work and are paid wages and this facilitates them.

Rehoboth ministries articulate, though they have a lot of plans and God willing, the goals will be fulfilled in a long-term; they have a strength of character in the name of lord that everything will go well.

Recently, Lillian Kabaganza, said she’s in good work relations with the choir she once sung in though it was personal reasons to quit.

Kabaganza is organizing a concert on 16 October this year in Serena Hotel
Kabaganza is Christian and a singer, but apart from that, she helps young Rwandan people who come from poor families from her cell (Akagari) and brought them together to love their country.

She says it was her own Initiative based on the vulnerable situations she saw the youth in their daily lives and start the program to prepare them for their future as leaders.

The government of Rwanda will create a new graduate engineering program in conjunction with a major U.S. university, a step toward building itself into an African technology hub 17 years after a genocidal conflict claimed nearly a million lives.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Jared L. Cohon, president of Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Mellon University, signed the agreement Friday in Pittsburgh to establish and operate the program from Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, where a new campus is to be built.

The African Development Fund is supporting the project with US$13 million in funding, according to the fund’s parent, the African Development Bank.

The tie-up says as much about the ambitions of the tiny landlocked African country as it does the U.S. engineering powerhouse, which wants to bring into its folds a new generation of tech-savvy African leaders.

Unlike China and India—two other billion-person markets—Africa generally lacks the top-flight universities to feed young talent to companies that are now investing on the continent.

“You can’t leave a billion persons behind and make this a better world,” said Pradeep K. Khosla, the head of Carnegie Mellon’s College of Engineering. “Our goal is to educate people who will have influence.”

The partnership will mark the first time a major U.S. university offering a graduate engineering degree program in Rwanda. Carnegie Mellon will initially offer a Master of Science in information technology.

Separately, Carnegie Mellon will work with the Rwandan government to start training programs for technology entrepreneurs.

The program aims to admit 40 students for the fall 2012 class and increase to about 150 by 2017. It will target students in east Africa—giving preference to those in Rwanda—but will be open to applicants world-wide, according to a statement from Carnegie Mellon.

In the second year, Mr. Khosla said, Carnegie Mellon will offer an additional Master of Science in electrical and computer engineering.

Some business executives in Rwanda caution that Carnegie Mellon could struggle to lift the program to U.S. standards. Rwanda has only about 11 million people and its university system is seen as lagging behind those of neighbors including Kenya.

Carnegie Mellon faculty may also face a steep learning curve teaching in a place where national aspirations typically outstrip reality on the ground.

“This is a country that dreams big,” said Carter Crockett, a management consultant in Rwanda for Karisimbi Business Partners. “But the program will need to be a long-term play.”

Under President Kagame, Rwanda has emerged as one of the continent’s most dynamic economies. It has styled itself as the Singapore of Africa, cutting away bureaucratic red tape and drawing in telecommunication companies, banks and other investors.

In a report this month, the World Economic Forum ranked Rwanda after South Africa and Mauritius as the most economically competitive countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Rwandan president, a former guerrilla commander, helped rescue Rwanda from a 1994 genocide that killed an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsi, as well as some Hutu. But in his 17 years in power, Mr. Kagame has also been criticized by human-rights groups for stifling dissent.

Carnegie Mellon’s Mr. Khosla said the university isn’t worried about major political unrest upending the program. He said the university conducted a risk analysis and judged that probability “extremely low.”

Write to Peter Wonacott at [email protected]

Work is one of today’s most difficult words to define. Despite some definitions given to the word, the term “work” many people, especially Rwandans are still starved for the meaning of work. Many, if not all, believe that working means sitting in an office. We will analyze this controversy step by step in this article.

A student who is studying hard would say he is working hard, a doctor who has many patients waiting for himself would say he has a lot of work, and a mother, house boy or a house girl at home who has finished cooking and doing the laundry would say: “I am finished with my work”. Finally, what is the appropriate definition of work?

There is a yearning to align life value with work to make it meaningful. In order to find a proper meaning of work we have to consider the human’s instinct of value. Good work is the one that valorize the one who does it.

How many people want to be called president, administrator, honorable, Chief, or other valuable titles that people get after their jobs?
The answer can be found in the competitions that people do to achieve such honors which make them more “valuable” in the society.

Furthermore, jobs like gardening, cooking and waiting are not envied by many people, not only because they pay little money, but also because they don’t immediately respond to human’s instinct of appreciation and dignity.

Pence, a contemporary writer, agree with this assumption: by listing the following as the realization of good work: development and exercise of unique personal qualities, intrinsic satisfaction in the activity, personal choice in accepting the job in the first place. All the listed elements enshrine the quest of value on the side of the worker.

For instance, if we compare the most envied jobs in Rwanda, we find that almost all of them are jobs that make the worker more admired and respected in the society.

However, we cannot totally say that there might be a type of work which is not valuable. First of all, because the notion of “value” is complex in itself, and because it is relative, what is valuable for one person may not be valuable for another.

Pence hones in on that difference the conception of value by saying: “If Jones regards gardening as intrinsically unsatisfying but Smith enjoys it very much, then gardening will be labor for Jones but not for Smith”.

Secondly, what seems to be invaluable for the worker may be valuable for the one who benefits from the work the worker has done.

I feel that whatever job you have, your work is valuable to a certain extent. I shift from a work for value to a work for a purpose. Work is also defined as an activity done with a will of achieving something.

That desire of achieving something can sometimes result from/into compassion -from Latin meaning : “co-suffering”, which is a virtue of doing something regardless of the pain that may result from it. There are people who work with an intense desire of serving others as their primordial goals; their jobs are callings.

But, even if work is not done by compassion it is still work because it is done for a purpose, which can be money or self-fulfillment.

I feel that every Rwandan who does his work with love or for any other good purpose is working regardless of what kind of job they he does. We cannot assume that if someone is working at home; taking care of the family, the house, the garden, the cattle or something else, doesn’t work.

They are making a service for the whole family; they are producing. Production is the essential element of work. I feel that house boys and house girls work too- there is no way of saying that those who sit in offices are the only ones who work.

In addition, work can be an activity that we do to gain knowledge without necessarily being paid for it. Work doesn’t involve money all the time. There is another kind of work which involves knowledge, studying or apprenticing.

It is work, because by studying or apprenticing, one improves and produces a new thinking which can be useful for either him or others. All students work; they have to be respected as workers.

In Rwanda, almost all the time, we say that someone has gone to work only if he works in an office somewhere. This is something we should change because the real definition of work is: every valuable production we make for a purpose with a purpose in mind- it is not limited in recognition, honor or pecuniary acquisition. It’s quite visible that those people we think don’t work, work too.

At least 3,816 children have benefited from Kicukiro-based New Life Bible Church under Africa New Life Ministries.

The church has directly supported children in Education and health including those children picked from the street and turned into normal life.

The Minister of Gender and Family Promotion Alyoisia Inyumba(pictured below) has also been mesmerized by the works of Kicukiro-based Church.

Inyumba was the guest of honor at the church’s celebration of 10 years of what has been achieved. She said that the church was complimenting government programmes.

Minister Inyumba was referring to the church’s programmes offered to cater for children, families and promotion of Girls’ education.

“After the 1994 Genocide, the government was solely doing almost everything. We had orphans and widows that needed support. It is good to see this kind of partnership with the church,” Inyumba said in her speech.

“This is a new revelation in our country. I have witnessed how you have shown your efforts helping children, and their families plus promoting girls education, this is my day,”. She added.

She said that the church in Rwanda is becoming potential partner to the government in developing the country and helping Rwandans attain good life.

At the celebration, Africa New Life Ministries also announced full scholarships to eight girls from needy families to University.

“We are proud to announce that these girls will be getting all necessary requirements they need to pursue farther education at different universities, from tuition fees, stationeries, to the clothes and the rest,” Charles Mugisha the senior pastor of the church said while announcing the lucky girls.

Odeth Murekatete , 20 year old girl from Kageyo where Rwandans from Tanzania have camped said she took the scholarship as a miracle from God.

“I had sat for my senior six in 2009 and had lost hope. I am happy for this scholarship but I also see it as a miracle from God,” Said Murekatete from a family of 11 children now in the camp.

Finally the waiting for the sensational Jamaican-American singer Sean Kingston aka Kisean Anderson is over. He jetted into the country this morning at around 11am with Rwandair aircraft.

He held a press conference at Kigali Serena hotel.

He will be on stage at Amahoro Stadium at 8pm and will be proceeded by local artists mainly Primus Guma Guma Super Stars and also with Tom Close as the winner.

The stadium’s gates will open starting at 4pm this very evening.

A whooping Frw 3 Bn were used by Horizon Group this year in buying of 26 units of constructing machines and acquiring of 30 hectares of land in Kinyinya, a Kigali city suburb intending to construct a model estate.

This was announced by the Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Eugene Haguma during the opening ceremony of showcasing Horizon Group’s achievements reached over the past years and also exhibiting of the brand new machines of the company.

According to Haguma, all the expenditure is being done to contribute to the country’s vision 2020. “Most of the Rwandans don’t know what we do as the Horizon Group. We therefore, came to showcase our achievements and improvements done by the company because we now have enough investment” he said.

The group has three subsidiary business units that include Horizon construction, the first major subsidiary company, Horizon sopyrwa, a pyrethrum processing business that was acquired by the Group in 2007, and Horizon logistics, a primary business to support peace keeping forces in mission areas.

Haguma said that Horizon sopyrwa is empowered to providing better products to farmers that are produced locally.

He emphasized that the machine will be shipped into the country from the U.K before the end of this year and will be used to process insectsides out of the local raw material that are not harmful to health.

The exhibition that set off on Friday Sept. 16, at Expo Grounds Gikondo will run until Sunday Sept. 18.

Horizon Group was initiated in 2007 by the Ministry of Defense (MOD) out of the Ministry’s constitutional commitment to participate in the social and economic development of Rwanda.

Currently, Horizon Group is owned by ZIGAMA CSS a microfinance cooperative bank and MMI the Military Medical Insurance Company.

Presently, Horizon Group consists of three established subsidiary companies and several Joint Venture partnerships- Horizon Construction, Horizon SOPYRWA and Horizon Logistics, as well as a number of other Joint Ventures.

The Group concentrates on identifying and investing in the areas that are of strategic and national importance to Rwanda, but lacking in local private sector capacity to invest, manage and develop the necessary infrastructure and expertise.

The Natural Fire 11 military exercise kicked off Friday Sept.16 at Chukwani Training Center in Zanzibar, Tanzania.

Approximately 350 participants from the EAC bloc and the United States are conducting training for the next four days, with the objective to equip the participants with the skills to conduct peace support operations, humanitarian assistance, disaster response, counter terrorism and counter piracy.

During the opening ceremony, the combatants paraded in front of the gathered senior military leadership from all six countries.

In a statement at the opening ceremony the Chief of Defense Forces, Tanzania People’s Defense Force (TPDF), General DA Mwamunyange stressed the importance of the five partner states to be able to respond quickly and efficiently to complex security challenges.

Gen. Mwamunyange stated his desire that the countries be able to foster cooperation among the EAC bloc.

The aim of the exercise is also to enhance the working relationship between civil authorities and international organizations as well as to improve military interoperability among the partner states’ armed forces.

Several speakers repeated the desire and the need to cooperate, share information, and learn from each other.

Brig. Gen. Owens, Deputy Commanding General, U.S. Army Africa remarked: “We must learn what to do, how to do it better, and how to overcome obstacles to getting it done,”

Deputy Secretary General of the East African Community (EAC), Enos Bukuku at the event noted: “It is a fact that peace and security are the prerequisites for social and economic development,”

Bukuku added that Natural Fire 11 bears great significance with regard to the broader goals and vision of a competitive, prosperous and united East Africa. Similar sentiments had been echoed by Brig.Gen.Owens.

“Ultimately the goal of this exercise is to improve our collective preparedness. When it comes to peace support operations, it is important to respond quickly and efficiently to complex security challenges,” said Owens.

“In just a little time we have been on the ground, I have been impressed with the professionalism and attitude everyone has displayed,” said Owens in his closing remarks.

The Minister of Defense and National Service for United Republic of Tanzania Hon Dr. Hussein Ali Mwinyi who was also the Chief guest recalled that regional peace and security is primarily guaranteed by a collective efforts which mobilize national synergies and reduces tensions between the states.

He added that the four things of Peace support operations, counter terrorism, disaster response and anti-piracy represent really problems whose effective solutions can only be found in a regional setting.

Rwanda is however, represented in this exercise by a contingent of 35 officers drawn from Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) and Brig. Gen. Mushyo Kamanzi from Rwanda is the Commander of the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) of the Natural Fire 11. The Exercise will end on 21st September.