The centre of excellence was launched during a high-level National Forum on Knowledge Sharing for Inclusive and Sustainable New Community Development in Kigali.
This center was set up and is managed by the Rwanda Green Fund, and has been operational since 2016, through a series of workshops that were organized to gather and share knowledge and preliminary expectations and to build capacities in knowledge sharing among key stakeholders.
Hubert Ruzibiza, the Rwanda Green Fund’s CEO said he hopes the knowledge sharing platform will facilitate the exchange on tools and practices for sustainable development amongst different institutions.
The online centre of Excellence will be able to feed into the development dialogues taking place in neighbouring countries, said Fodé Ndiaye, United Nations Resident Coordinator and Resident Representative of UNDP.
“Rwanda has developed a number of innovative solutions to its development challenges over the past 20 years, by sharing its successes through this platform with other countries, Rwanda will be helping others.”, he said.
Kim Eung Joong, Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to Rwanda, said the genesis of the project was a multi-country initiative based on a form of community-driven local development in Korea called Saemaul Undong (SMU), which is based on the principles of diligence, self-help and cooperation towards transformed communities with a long-term shared vision of a better life for all through small-scale self-help projects.
“UNDP and the Republic of Korea partnered to promote the SMU-inspired Inclusive and Sustainable New Communities (ISNC) programme in six countries: Rwanda, Uganda, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Bolivia,” he said, adding that the Rwanda experience was the only one of the six to involve the development of a virtual platform to facilitate knowledge management and sharing.”
The Rwandan Center of Excellence is now being assessed as a best practice for lessons that can be leveraged and applied elsewhere.
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