{Rwanda and Sweden today signed a grant worth 100 million Swedish krona (approximately US$ 14 million dollars or RwF 9.3 billion) to support the National Employment Program (NEP) during the fiscal years 2014/15 – 2016/17.}
“The National Employment Program is the government flagship program for fulfilling the ambitions of the EDPRS II with regards to productive employment which aims to create at least two hundred thousand jobs annually, ” Claver Gatete, the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning said.
The overall objectives of NEP are (1) creating sufficient jobs that are adequately remunerative and sustainable across the economy, (2) equipping the workforce with vital skills and attitude for increased productivity that are needed for the private sector growth, and (3) provide a national framework for coordinating all employment and related initiatives and activities in the public, private sector and civil society.
Sweden sees productive employment as the main sustainable path out of poverty – as well as a way to promote inclusive growth throughout the economy.
“We see the funding of NEP as a way to support the government’s work on promoting productive jobs that provide people living in poverty a sustainable way to self-reliance,” says Ms. Maria Håkansson, Chargé d’Affaires at the Swedish Embassy in Kigali.
The approach of the NEP is well in line with Vision 2020. Moving towards productive off-farm jobs is needed to reach the ambitious targets for poverty reduction.
Creating jobs is important but in itself not enough – employment needs to be sufficiently productive to provide a sustainable source of income.
Also, people living in poverty across the country will need to be capacitated to grasp the job opportunities or to become job creators themselves.
NEP offers an opportunity to support this broad-based agenda under one umbrella as it tackles both the demand side by promoting entrepreneurship and SME growth, and the supply side by equipping people with productive skills.
NEP provides a nationwide outreach of activities aimed to promote entrepreneurship and productive employment with a specific focus on women and youth.
The program was launched in April 2014 and became operational in July 2014. NEP is an umbrella program designed to gather previously scattered interventions aimed at promoting employment into one coordination structure that is expected to increase efficiency and effectiveness of the use of resources.
The NEP aims at promoting productive employment of women and youth through four main pillars: Entrepreneurship and Business Development, Skills Development Labor Market Intervention and Coordination and Monitoring & Evaluation.
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