For the summer of 2013, Rwanda will be my home. These are some of my musings and findings in my journey through this incredible country..


Sunday, June 23, 2013

I'm here Kigali!!

Today marks the end of my first week in Kigali. I'm sitting in a nice cafe with great coffee and internet after treating myself to a great south-Indian lunch. Guilty as charged, this was not the image of 'Africa' I had in my mind before I came to Kigali for the first time. The image I had made was of tribal African people, with bright, colorful clothes and jewelry, nice dance and music. Or of young men  carrying guns, patrolling the roads and spreading terror. Or of extreme extreme poverty. Obviously media has not entirely made up these images, just that Kigali is a very different place.

I wonder how did the media miss the awesome weather, beautiful views, awesome and simple people, safety and ease of living in this place. Maybe it was too busy talking about the genocide and President Kagame's dictatorship.

I will try to document my experiences and thoughts while I'm here. First an idea of what I'm doing here: I am interning with the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), which is a government agency dealing with increasing private investments in the country. One of their functions is to deal with existing businesses here, from the time of registration to after-care. And the other, bigger function is to promote investment, both domestic and foreign. The government believes that private investments are one of the most important ways towards economic development and poverty reduction in the country.

My work is two-fold: RDB works on formulation and reform of government policies which impact businesses. I am helping RDB with 4-5 such policy proposals and planning. I'm most excited about the Private Sector Development Strategy which is big a part of the more holistic five year Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy. Second, I'm helping them streamline their internal reporting system through an excel tool.

Pretty exciting!!

RDB is an amazing organization and I'm pretty impressed by it. I think there's still a lot to know though and hence I will keep my RDB thoughts for one of the last posts in this blog. For now, here go my first impressions!


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