Nyagatare District, the Ministry of Local Government convened a two-day (23-24 March 2023) retreat of the “Governance and Decentralisation Sector Working Group” to reflect on “harnessing citizen participation and accountability for transformational governance”.

The retreat was organized to have discussions on relevant sector issues and policies mainly focusing on practical strategies for further enhancement of citizen participation and gender mainstreaming in the sector, policy and practice linkages for attainment of the National Strategy for Transformation (NST1) objectives, reassess the relevance and effectiveness of sector policy actions vis-à-vis the transformational governance policy and strategy orientation, as well as enhancement of Sector Working Group (SWG) coordination effectiveness.

In his opening remarks, the Minister of Local Government Musabyimana Jean Claude highlighted that governance is a central pillar in Rwanda’s development process, and emphasized on the importance of “working together to ensure our Citizens are further transformed from being beneficiaries to becoming clients of our production sectors”.

“Without a transformational and a people centered governance other developmental pillars can be a fiction or play a watch dog role. Our Government’s long-term strategies (NST1 and Vision 2050) recognise the governance role for a sustainable economic growth and development through strengthening of partnerships and institutional collaboration.” Minister Musabyimana said

“(One of the) success stories in our governance is the stakeholder coordination where our development actors and local level partners work in close partnership with central and local authorities. Partners, NGOs and CSOs align their plans and aspirations with the needs of the areas in which they plan to implement them. One outcome of this harmonisation has been mutual accountability through JADF framework.” Minister Musabyimana added

On the other hand, Dr. Marc De Santis, Regional Director for SDC and Co-Chair of Governance and Decentralisation SWG reaffirmed the willingness of development partners to contribute to the transformational journey on which Rwanda embarked several years ago with a particular focus on increasing citizen participation, engagement, and partnership in development.

“Rwanda believes that Citizen Participation is an important aspect of transformational governance and so do we. We are convinced that retreats focusing on specific topics such as this one allows to further strengthen the collaboration between the different actors and achieve Development Effectiveness” stated Marc De Santis, Co-Chair of the SWG.

The Governance and Decentralization Sector Working Group focuses on promoting good governance principles through increasing citizen participation in decision making, planning, implementation, and evaluation; improving service delivery especially in local government; capacity building for local government administrative entities: follow up enforcement of Local Government laws/regulations, builds synergies and promotes joint working and accountability within the sector.

-End-