How the land of 1,000 hills became the land of 1,000 opportunities

On an uncharacteristically hot Saturday morning late last month, one woman stood out like a sore thumb among a gathering of villagers in the Nyamata district of Eastern Province, Rwanda.

Resplendent in a flowery blouse, a black pair of trousers and the ballerina shoes that are all the rage among girls in Africa today, she had travelled here for a community initiative to construct houses for Rwandan refugees recently evicted from Tanzania, but even from a distance, you could tell she did not belong. But she fit in.

She moved from place to place, grabbing handfuls of mud and passing them on to the person next to her in whichever line she joined.

Beads of sweat formed on her forehead before coalescing into rivulets that trickled to the scorched earth underneath her feet; while, around her, the gravelly frenzy of a construction site — they were building six houses here, six among hundreds of others around the province — drowned any meaningful conversation a people could have.

BROKE INTO SONG

And so, now part of the rhythmic movements of her hosts, now totally blended into the tediously repetitious twists and turns and groans and grunts of the peasants, she broke into song.

Immediately, hundreds of mouths opened to lend her support; she the impromptu soloist, the rest the unconducted choir. They sang in Kinyarwanda — the Bantu tongue adopted by Kigali as a national language — for a few moments before switching to Kiswahili.

“Rwanda itajengwa na kina nani?” the soloist asked in a remarkable, air-piercing soprano.

“Rwanda itajengwa na sisi!” the crowd replied in unison, its hands digging deeper into the mixture of soil, cement, gravel and sand that would form the mortar by which the bonds of the new houses would find union.

For hours they sang and moved clay blocks and water drums and wooden pegs and whatnot as the houses took shape. And then, when all was done, they moved to a small opening by the road, hugged each other and spent a few minutes cracking jokes and generally having the usual bonhomie engagements of rural folk.

The woman disappeared into the crowd, her distinctive features now, like those of a zebra in a herd, blending effortlessly with the rest of mankind gathered here. You could not pick her out from the crowd any more.

SOCIAL ORIENTATION

After a few minutes, the crackle of a loudspeaker split the air. The gathering turned around, and there, perched atop a small anthill, stood the now discoloured woman. She had done her bidding, and now it was time to leave.

The woman standing atop that earthen mound, and who had spent the whole morning hauling bricks at a construction site, was Odette Uwamariya, the Governor of Rwanda’s Eastern Province.

She had been here for community work, called Umuganda in Kinyarwanda, a social orientation that is shaping post-genocide Rwanda.

Her story, and that of the villagers of Nyamata, illustrates how the ideology of Umuganda, propagated across Rwanda and enshrined in its Constitution, is being used as the cure-all for all its social woes.

The idea is simple: on the last Saturday of every month, people gather to do community work, be it clearing new village paths, building houses for the needy, sweeping the streets... anything. And because it is enshrined in the Constitution, it is a legal obligation.

“It is our way of giving back to the community,” said Ms Uwamariya in a short interview later. “It brings us together and affords us the opportunity to interact. Projects that are completed this way also acquire the admirable trait of communal ownership; and, as you know, anything owned communally is protected communally.”

UGANDA BUSH WAR

This ideology has been credited with Rwanda’s economic take-off. Because of its massive adoption across the nation — during which ordinary peasants have harnessed the power of numbers to build schools, medical centres, roads, hydro-electric plants and rehabilitate wetlands — its contribution to the national economy since 2007 is estimated at more than $60 million (Sh5.2 billion), says Ms Uwamariya.

That is no pocket change for a country that, just 20 years ago, was brought to its knees by one of the most brutal genocides in history.

Rwanda does not shy away from speaking about that dark chapter, which started with the shooting down, in April 1994, of President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane near Kigali Airport, killing the president and his Burundi counterpart, Cyprien Ntaryamira, all their entourage and French crew members.

Paul Kagame, a bright fellow who had left Rwanda to study in Uganda before serving under Uganda’s President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni in the Uganda Bush War and later in the Ugandan national army, assumed the dual roles of Vice-President and Minister for Defence, while Habyarimana’s deputy, Pasteur Bizimungu, was appointed president.

But Bizimungu abruptly resigned from the presidency in March 2000, and Kagame, whom observers say had been the de facto leader since the genocide, assumed the position in an acting capacity before he was elected later that year. He has been at the helm since.

NO-NONSENSE MAN

Kagame, described by the Daily Telegraph’s Richard Grant as a man radiating “a quality of intense seriousness that is both impressive and intimidating”, is more famous to his critics for that last trait: intimidating.

But, on the streets of Kigali, where his Umuganda philosophy reigns supreme, he is regarded as an intelligent, no-nonsense man who has shaped, for the better, the destiny of the Land of 1,000 Hills.

In his 14 years at the helm, the per-capita gross domestic product, calculated as a purchasing power parity, has grown from $567 (Sh49,839) in 2000 to $1,592 (Sh139,936) last year, while the annual economic growth rate has posted impressive figures, clocking an average of eight per cent between 2004 and 2010.

The reasons for this are hard to understand for the outsider, whose judgment is likely to be clouded by Rwanda’s poverty of resources, manpower and land. But, on a recent drive to Akagera National Park, the country’s largest animal reserve, the dots quickly became easy to join.

Just outside Kigali, the government is putting up a massive special economic zone in line with its Vision 2020 policy of liberalising the economy and reducing red tape — the Rwanda Development Board brags that it can issue a business licence in 24 hours.

And, because 90 per cent of the working population is engaged in farming, the government is slowly shifting their attention from the soil to the service industry, which, incidentally, contributes almost 45 per cent of the GDP.

APPLIED AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL

The concept of Umuganda might not find ready associations in the key tertiary contributors of banking and finance, wholesale and retail trade, hotels and restaurants, transport, storage, communication, insurance, real estate, business services, and public administration, but the same ideology employed at the village level is applied at the highest level of governance and business, says Ms Uwamariya.

That is why, in 2010, Transparency International (TI) ranked Rwanda as the eighth least corrupt out of 47 sub-Saharan countries, and the 66th in the world.

“In Rwanda,” reported TI, “anti-corruption efforts have focused on strengthening the legal and institutional framework, improving government effectiveness, building a strong and competent public service, reforming public finance management systems, and prosecuting corrupt officials at all levels of the public sector.”

Francois Gara, a tour operator here, says the efforts are bearing fruit. He has seen the best and the worst of Rwanda, watched as the country sunk to its knees then steadied itself for take-off, and is now crediting government effectiveness for the revival of the tourism sector.

When viewed through the prism of East Africa, Rwanda, really, has little to offer in terms of tourist attractions. The shores of Lake Kivu to Kigali’s west cannot rival the pristine beaches of Mombasa, nor can the scant offers at Akagera match the wild riches of Tanzania’s Serengeti.

Rwanda’s herds of giraffes trace their origin to Kenya, and, because there are no lions here, the government is negotiating with Nairobi to give them five females and three males to help repopulate their parks. So, comparatively, there is not much on offer on the wild side of things here.

Yet tourism, according to the Rwanda Development Board, is one of the fastest-growing economic resources and became the country’s leading foreign exchange earner in 2011.

This has been boosted by a rather interesting development: the establishment of a national airline. Operating from Kigali, which it calls “the heart of Africa”, RwandAir is one of the fastest growing airlines in the region, and shames Dar-es-Salaam and Kampala for not having their own national carriers despite their bigger economies.

Already flying to such popular destinations as Dubai, Johannesburg and Mombasa, the airline seeks to make Kigali a regional travel hub, and hence give Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport a run for its money.

BIGGEST AIPORT

At a function in Kigali recently, the minister for East Africa Co-operation, Monique Mukaruriza, hinted that Rwanda would also soon break ground for the construction of what would be “the biggest airport in the region”.

“It all fits within our growth plans,” says RwandAir Kenya country manager Connie Potel, adding that the airline, which is receiving a lot of kicks from the government, would soon expand its fleet, which currently consists of Boeings and Bombardiers, to include wide-body aircraft — “or Dreamliners” — between 2015 and 2016.

This is viewed as a great power boost to Kigali, which is already emerging as a strong regional player in the aviation industry.

A survey by UK-based consultancy firm Skytrax earlier this year illustrated how huge — and, some say, real — Kigali’s onslaught on the region’s aviation industry is when it ranked it higher than any other regional airport north of South Africa, at position one in East Africa, and seventh in Africa.

Durban’s King Shaka was ranked the best regional airport in Africa, followed by East London, Port Elizabeth and Bloemfontein airports — all in South Africa.

QUALITY OF PRODUCTS

The ratings, Skytrax marketing director Peter Miller says, were based on the quality of products and services, and that “this means a small regional airport which will have a different range of product and service options — compared to a major, international hub airport — can still be eligible for a high star ranking, provided it fulfils the conceived quality target”.

This, then, points to how Rwanda has become competitive in just 20 years. On the streets and the hillsides on this small nation, you may not sense the capitalistic rapaciousness of Nairobi, or Dar es Salaam, or Johannesburg, but beneath that veil of calmness boils a passion so strong, so powerful, that it is hard to project the country’s gains in the next few years if it keeps the pace.

But, to many, it all boils down to how people view, first, themselves, and, second, their neighbours. The land depends on the thinking of its people to flourish, and that thinking, you guessed right, is influenced by the Umuganda concept of Kagame.