[RwandaLibre] Online selling window still unopened in Rwanda

 

Online selling window still unopened in Rwanda

By Daniel Sabiiti Special Correspondent
Posted Saturday, February 8 2014 at 12:12


In Summary

Though e-commerce is still growing in southern Africa, Internet sales
and social marketing are rather new ideas of doing business in Rwanda.

While countries such as Kenya and Uganda have picked up the newest
business trend of buying and selling online, Rwandan firms predict the
country has a long way to go even with the existing access to the best
Internet in the region.

Though e-commerce is still growing in southern Africa, Internet sales
and social marketing are rather new ideas of doing business in Rwanda
and despite the existence of resourceful avenues like e-commerce firms
(local and international), Yahoo! Pages such as Kigali Life and
business advertisements on Facebook.

As businesses grow in Rwanda, there has been a demand for imported
high-end tech gadgets, machinery and general commodities that are not
available locally.

This has seen some firms come into the market to provide the services
despite initiatives by the Ministry of Commerce and the private sector
federations to assist local entrepreneurs to access these goods from
outside.

Among the few such firms that operate in Kigali city are QNET Rwanda,
NetSys Computers Ltd, Duncun & Duncun, Bitcom Network Services Ltd and
BidNetwork.

Education required

"Rwandans have to be educated about this e-business and especially
social marketing. It is not easy to convince someone to buy something
they cannot see and touch. That is true for most Africans, but with
time we hope to make business a new trend of doing business in
Rwanda," said Francis Kamanzi, the Country manager for QNET Rwanda.

In a bid to convince Rwandans to use the Internet for not only reading
and sending e-mails but also doing business online, BidNetwork has
developed and put online an innovative website built entirely in
Kinyarwanda, cyamunara.com.

Other prominent networks that have tried to initiate the online
selling is a Yahoo! Group, Kigali Life, where the "Kigali lifers" (KL)
have turned social networking into a business centre. The group has
more than 10,158 members who post and advertise for free what they
want to sell or share, including experiences and job applications.

The government and Korea Telecoms recently entered a public
partnership that would help Rwanda get high-speed broadband network
and expand its online services capability and in turn help the country
meet its targets in the ICT sector.

READ: Rwanda scores another first in region with 4G rollout

Some of the small business operators in Kigali say buying and selling
goods online is hampered by lack of funds and key players.

But I&M Bank says this is an issue that has been raised by many
clients and it plans to start a new credit window for such business
plans, adding that by the end of the year the new product will have
been launched.

"This is a business trend that we have to study first and see how
feasible it can be, but there is hope since it is under
consideration," said Blaise Gasabira, the head of treasury at I&M.

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/Rwanda/Business/Online-selling-window-still-unopened-in-Rwanda/-/1433224/2197624/-/kqu6t8/-/index.html

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[RwandaLibre] Former Rwandan refugee with a big heart for his fellow orphans 

 

Former Rwandan refugee with a big heart for his fellow orphans

A theatrical performance for HIV orphans at Amahoro Foundation's
educational events; Inset left: The foundation's founder, Kayitare
Wayitare, confers with a member. Photos/Cyril Ndegeya

By Gilbert Mwijuke Special Correspondent
Posted Saturday, February 8 2014 at 13:25

Kayitare Wayitare's parents fled Rwanda after the 1959 uprising that
deposed the king and sent many Tutsis into exile.

According to their persecutors, they are foreigners, extraneous
competitors for the small piece of land that is available. They must
die, the Hutu extremists would vow. So, any Tutsi with some
initiative, luck and wits runs as far away from this place as
possible.

But not every direction is a propitious one. Whoever goes west to
Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC) will worsen the
situation because they will stumble upon some of the thickest jungles
on the continent. Those going to Burundi in the south will also err –
because, even there, they risk persecution by the Hutus of that
country.

Lost parents to HIV/Aids

Only Uganda in the north held some promise: There, Mr Wayitare's
parents would find the fertile lands of central Uganda – the lush and
splendid Pearl of Africa. It is at Kyotera, in the central Ugandan
district of Rakai, that they would make their way in the hope that
they would survive, that life here would be better.

But alas! Mr Wayitare's parents become part of the central Ugandan
population that would later be wiped out – almost entirely – by the
outbreak in the early 1980s of the HIV/Aids pandemic.

When Mr Wayitare was about two years old, his parents succumbed to the
scourge, leaving the toddler and his siblings to the elements.

Life became very hard for the children. However, their main problem
was their statelessness. They could not return to Rwanda, their home
country, and even though life in Uganda had become tricky, they
endured it. Somehow, they survived.

Somehow – that is how best to describe their situation, its
delicateness, its uncertainty. Their situation worsened by the fact
that they were strangers from another country, another culture,
another language.

They did not know whether they would ever return to their home
country, although they viewed this question with indifference,
preoccupied as they were with something else: How to survive.

The youngest in the family, Mr Wayitare grew up in an orphanage in
Kyotera as his siblings scattered to different parts of Uganda in
search of a livelihood. At Compassion International Uganda, the
orphanage that took care of children that had lost their parents to
HIV/Aids, Mr Wayitare got a chance to attend primary school. But, even
here, life was not that good: He lacked education materials and basics
such as soap and sugar.

He then joined Namalembe Secondary School in Iganga, in the east, for
his Ordinary Level education, and moved in with his elder sister, who
was married there. But life in Iganga was even worse as his
brother-in-law disliked him.

By the time he completed 'O' Level in 1999, he had read and heard so
much about Rwanda that he could not resist the urge to relocate to his
motherland. So, in 2000, he embarked on a long journey to the land of
his ancestors.

Do 'something for my country'

"After reading and hearing a lot about the RPF fighters who liberated
Rwanda, I felt that I also had to do something for my country,"
recalled the soft-spoken 28-year-old. "I arrived in Rwanda with a
resolve to join the army; I felt that it was the only way I could
contribute to the development of my country."

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/Rwanda/News/Former-Rwandan-refugee-with-a-big-heart-for-his-fellow-orphans-/-/1433218/2197688/-/12klbh4/-/index.html

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[RwandaLibre] Jerusalem Post: The Zionist angel of Rwanda

 

JPost.com
Opinion
Op- Ed Contributors

The Zionist angel of Rwanda

By YOSEF I. ABRAMOWITZ
02/08/2014 22:17

The Agahozo Shalom Youth Village provides a nurturing community for
500 of the most needy orphans.

A graduation photo from the class of the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village.
Photo: COURTESY AGAHOZO-SHALOM YOUTH VILLAGE

An hour outside of Kigali, past industrious children carrying yellow
plastic water canisters and women with bundles on their heads, where
the road snakes up revealing a stunning view of the green valleys
below, Anne Heyman, in 2006, stood in the rain under a lone mango tree
with representatives of 56 local land-owners and redefined history
with hope.

In the land of a thousand hills, a million people were butchered in a
hundred days in 1994, leaving a million orphans by the time the RPF
(Rwandan Patriotic Front) staggered into the bloodied Rwandan capital,
as the world stood idly by. A decade after the genocide, Heyman and
her husband Seth Merrin sponsored at Tufts University a speaker from
Rwanda, as part of a series on moral voices. A decade after the
genocide, they were horrified to learn, there were still a million
orphans in Rwanda and no initiative to solve the issue.

Heyman, 43 at the time, dug deep into her Young Judaea Zionist
activist roots for inspiration - she grew up singing Arik Einstein's
"You and I will change the world" - and resolved to import to Rwanda
the Israeli model of youth villages that were established after the
Holocaust to absorb a generation of traumatized youth.

The Agahozo Shalom Youth Village - part Yemin Orde, part Kibbutz
Ketura, part Anne Heyman - opened its door only two years after Heyman
signed the land deal under the mango tree. It provides a nurturing
community for 500 of the most needy orphans, a campus with a communal
dining room, high school, health care clinic, homes with 16 kids each
and a house mother, workshop spaces, running water, plumbing and
electricity, and the best Internet service in Rwanda.

Nearly a decade after hatching her audacious idea, the mango tree
still stands, yet the angel of Rwanda has fallen. President Shimon
Peres sent a condolence message that was read Monday at New York's
Bnai Jeshurin synagogue, before a stunned community of mourners.
Heyman, 52, died on January 31 on the operating table, as physicians
from the Delray Medical Center tried to save her following a
horseback-riding accident during a jumping competition.

As Rwandans begin to commemorate 20 years since the genocide by
machete, they are also now mourning a daughter of Israel. This
Saturday, a special service will be held for the 500 kids at the
village to mourn the woman they called "our grandmother Anne Heyman."
Hundreds will be in attendance.

Susan and I were invited by Anne to volunteer at the village two years
ago, and to bring our children. It was, we knew at the time, a trap
that we knowingly walked into, because Anne, and her mission, were
compelling. (Two of our children hail from East Africa.) And when you
meet the kids of the village, look into their eyes and see the sparks
of hope and intelligence and love, it overtakes the despair, anger and
sadness that you leave with after visiting the genocide museum in the
capital.

For Anne, who owned a home in Herzliya as well as in New York, spoke
Hebrew to her kids, and met Seth under the blazing sun of Kibbutz
Ketura as a volunteer, building an Israeli-inspired youth village was
21st-century Zionism, replete with many Jewish and Israeli volunteers.
Yet for Anne it was not about public relations, but about the positive
role that Israel could play in the world.

Indeed, 99 percent of the graduating class last year passed the
matriculation exams, and students give back to their local communities
by teaching English, building houses and helping with farming. A young
woman, Emet, explained to me over a plain yet nutritious meal of
mostly beans, rice and plantains that her first two years in the
village, she learned "tikkun halev," fixing of the heart - she taps
gently her T-shirt - in order to go out and do "tikkun olam," healing
the world.

To go from destitution and despair to academic accomplishment and
community leadership is a miracle, one celebrated by Rwandan President
Paul Kagame, both at the first graduation, and then, last June, when
he visited Jerusalem, where Anne and I were privileged to host him to
share a vision for a solar-powered Rwanda, starting with the youth
village.

An eery snowstorm swept over New York City during the funeral. "These
are the ice cold tears of God," said Seth, her husband. It rained on
their wedding day, pointed out one eulogizer, and snowed during her
funeral, but the rest of her life "was pure sunshine."

Her three children, dignified and menchlekeit, spoke of a mother who
instilled a love of family, of giving, and of pursuing dreams. She
would have both kvelled thru the tears and words and sniffles but
also, frankly, would have been impatient. "Who is going to care for
the kids of the village?" she intoned from Heaven. "That's all that
matters." We all heard it.

The author serves as CEO of Energiya Global Capital and can be
followed on Twitter @captainsunshine.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/The-Zionist-angel-of-Rwanda-340791

--
SIBOMANA Jean Bosco
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http://www.youtube.com/user/sibomanaxyz999
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[RwandaLibre] In defence of Rwanda's political freedoms and human rights

 

In defence of Rwanda's political freedoms and human rights

By Asuman Bisiika
Posted Saturday, February 8 2014 at 02:00

Whereas the president's handlers say he speaks his mind, the framed
portrayal by accusers is that of a brazen insensitive ruler.

At the end of January, the United Nations Special Rapporteur published
a report of his findings on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly
and of association in Rwanda. It carried a Kigali dateline. After the
banal entreaties about the good governance practices by the government
of Rwanda, the report went into particular incidents manifesting a
tight political system.

Like most national constitutions, the Rwandan Constitution provides
for freedom of peaceful assembly, political plurality and other
aspects of civil liberties.

The law, however, demands that prior to holding a demonstration, the
organisers of the demonstration must notify (and obtain authorisation
from) the state. The UN raportuer says "this creates an inherent
contradiction in requiring both prior notification and authorisation,
paving the way for arbitrary decisions by the concerned authorities".

The raportuer observed that peaceful protests, voicing dissent and
criticising government policies are not allowed. But "peaceful
assemblies which authorities favour are allowed to take place; such as
the commemoration marches organised by Ibuka, which are also
facilitated by the authorities". He adds: "For instance, students who
presented a petition to the Prime Minister protesting against the
reduction of scholarships were arrested for illegal demonstration.

In addition, Mr Sylvain Sibomana, Secretary General of the Unified
Democratic Forces FDU-Inkingi, was arrested with a fellow party member
outside a courtroom while attending the trial of Ms Victoire Ingabire,
Chair of the same party. They both wore T-shirts with the inscription
"democracy and justice". Mr Sibomana was injured by law enforcement
officials in the course of his arrest.

But we have heard and seen all that on the African continent; even as
nearer home as in our fair East African Community. So, we ask, why the
obsession with Rwanda when most African countries are not any
different from Rwanda in the area of political freedoms?

In fact if one read this report without knowing that it is about
Rwanda, one could as well think it was written about Uganda. Let us
face it, in East Africa, the only country in which the political
opposition is enjoying a respectable level of political freedoms is
Kenya.

Even in Tanzania, the so-called kisiwa kya amaani (the island of
peace), the state still treats the opposition in a manner that
contradicts provisions of the Constitution. Then you ask yourself, why
is this obsession with Rwanda?

In my narrow assessment, I think Rwanda attracts scrutiny because in
most cases, the state responds to these reports (in the thinking that
these people would appreciate the Rwandan explanations). Rwandan
government officials are very passionate about defending their
government.

The president almost always responds to accusations that Rwanda has a
bad record of human rights and political freedoms. And when he
responds, he speaks with so much candour and frankness that it borders
on the undiplomatic. And the media enjoys that. Whereas the
president's handlers say he speaks his mind, the framed portrayal by
accusers is that of a brazen insensitive ruler.

Anecdote Ms Victoire Ingabire, Mr Sylvain Sibomana and Mr Anselme
Mutuyimana are senior members of FDU-Inkingi political party (not
registered yet). Mr Bernard Ntaganda is from PS Imberakuri. They are
all serving sentences ranging from 4 to 15 years. But the law
governing political parties says that a sentence of five years and
above in prison comes with a ban from holding any leadership position
in any political party.

With a ban from holding any political office, the centre of gravity
for the above cases has shifted from legal arguments to morality. But
Rwandan government officials still argue the law…; disregarding the
morality of the sentences.

Mr Bisiika is the executive editor of East Africa Flagpost.

http://www.monitor.co.ug/OpEd/Commentary/In-defence-of-Rwanda-s-political-freedoms-and-human-rights/-/689364/2196966/-/11k9g2b/-/index.html

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[RwandaLibre] Crystal Ventures staff to lose jobs

 

Crystal Ventures staff to lose jobs

By ALEX NGARAMBE Rwanda Today
Posted Saturday, February 8 2014 at 12:12

CVL, which has an estimated value of $500 million, is owned by the
ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF). It has spread its tentacles in
various sectors – such as construction, furniture, beverage, security
and manufacturing – and employs thousands of Rwandans.

Rwanda's biggest local investment company, Crystal Ventures Ltd (CVL),
will lay off more than 100 employees as it overhauls its businesses to
increase efficiency.

While several companies under CVL have struggled to make profits,
others have closed shop choking with heavy losses.

Rwanda Today has learnt that CVL's management has been forced to close
its subsidiary, Graphic Printing Solutions (GPS), because of
inefficiency, rendering over 30 employees jobless.

"The management's decision to close GPS was taken because it was
inefficient and made losses while there were local private companies
that were doing a good job," Elias Bayingana, the chief executive
officer of CVL, said.

CVL, which has an estimated value of $500 million, is owned by the
ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF). It has spread its tentacles in
various sectors – such as construction, furniture, beverage, security
and manufacturing – and employs thousands of Rwandans.

Other CVL firms have been forced to restructure in an effort to cut
the cost of operations, which have been higher than profits. They
include furniture makers Mutara Enterprise, where 150-200 staff have
lost their jobs, and construction firm NPD-Cotraco.

The management has however allayed fears by employees in other
companies that the restructuring will affect them.

READ: Crystal Ventures in management shake-up

The company is also selling most of its stake in major businesses to
improve efficiency and profitability.

Talks are ongoing between Inyange Industries, Rwanda's leading food
processing company that is 100 per cent owned by CVL, and Brookside
Dairy (K) Ltd to sell a 51 per cent controlling stake to the Kenyan
firm in a bid to expand operations into the East African region.

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/Rwanda/Business/Crystal-Ventures-staff-to-lose-jobs-/-/1433224/2197626/-/val1ylz/-/index.html

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