After her visit to Rwanda Governance Board (RGB) on Wednesday, Zuma said other African countries should emulate Rwanda’s model on home grown solutions if they want to move forward.
Zuma and her delegation learnt about Rwanda’s own initiatives such as Gacaca jurisdiction, Girinka (one cow per family) programme, Ubudehe categorisation of citizens basing on their financial means, and community work locally known as ‘Umuganda’.
Others are National Leadership Retreat widely known as ‘Umwiherero’, National Dialogue (Umushyikirano), and leaders’ performance contract (Imihigo), among others.
Zuma said she and her delegation were eager to learn from Rwanda’s strategy that beat odds of the genocide to set the country on the cureent development trajectory.
“Nobody has the monopoly of ideas. Everyone has ideas. We believe that the first person to learn from is your neighbour —another African country which is doing well.
We are here to exchange ideas, to see where things are working better and where we can adapt the ideas to our own situation,” she said.
Zuma is immediate former Chairperson of African Union Commission and divorced wife of immediate former President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma.
RGB CEO Prof Anastase Shyaka said the talks with visitors were instrumental for both sides, adding that Rwanda and South Africa will keep sharing ideas for the citizens’ benefits.
“We have shared about our service delivery and institutions’ collaboration. They have also told us about how they also do it as we are all striving to build a citizen-based governance,” he said.
Zuma also hailed Rwanda’s steps towards ICT, saying that Rwanda’s decision to put ICT infrastructure wall-to-wall is something that the entire African continent should emulate.
On this tour, Zuma and delegation also visited other institutions including ministries and parastatals.
Leave a Reply