Innovation; key take away from RPF Youth League Congress

Author: Junior Rutikurabanzi

• 2022-12-27 05:23:00

It was full house at the iconic Intare Conference Arena in Rusororo, as members of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) Youth league recently met to take stock of their achievements in the last five years and to plan for the next two. 

Generally, the youth lauded the country’s leadership for creating an enabling environment for innovation to take place.

The RPF youth congress is a bi-annual gathering that attracts party youth leaders from its structures, grass roots level, up to the national level, as well as young professionals in various sectors. 

The youth in RPF are not peripheral actors. They are directly involved in the country’s development, and this is part of the political philosophy of RPF-Inkotanyi.

Before we delve into the specifics of data and facts, it is important to laud the country’s leadership that deliberately opted to engage the youth in national politics. In Africa and other parts of the world, important demographic groups such as youth and women, have always been politicized and depoliticized depending on trending political events, mostly around elections and special political campaigns. 

The purpose of the politicization of these two groups has always been to attract as many votes as they both represent a very large base. As soon as elections are over, the trend in some parts of the world has always been to push these groups on the side, a move that has had consequences in the social-economic development of countries.  

In Rwanda, the politicization of the youth and women is a deliberate and strategic choice informed by the country’s resolve to achieve inclusive sustainable development. There is scientific consideration of demographic factors in the whole socio-economic development calculation as well. 

To put it in simple terms, you cannot hope to attain sustainable socio-economic development where you have not engaged majority of the population in decision making or drawing strategies that deliver. This can be compared to building your house on sand.

Back to the RPF Youth Congress. Over the last five years, 153 youth based companies are implementing the country’s road maintenance program. They are currently operating in 26 districts across the country except in the City of Kigali and Nyamasheke district.

So far, 467 youths who are members of these companies, mostly professionals in engineering, technicians in various fields and accountants secured permanent jobs from these joint programs.  An exciting 7,760 youths secured temporary employment, mostly from the routine maintenance of unpaved road scheme of the project. 

Throughout the course of this project, youth-led companies acquired some construction equipment such as small compactor machines and other equipment from existing micro leasing schemes. 

In other sectors of country’s priorities, the figures were equally interesting. Since September 2019, more than 10,000 youths enrolled in the Eco brigade project, a joint ecosystem protection initiative between the Ministry of Youth, the Ministry of Environment and other partners such as the Local Administrative Entities (LODA), UNDP and KOICA. Their main areas of intervention are in radical and progressive terraces, forestation, resilient agriculture and financial literacy.

Finally, the celebrated Youth Connekt awards contributed in the creation of 8,022 jobs for the youths since 2019. A total of 384 competitive and innovative youth businesses have been financially awarded and continue to contribute in addressing unemployment amongst the youths as well as encouraging innovation.

The general observation from the RPF Youth Congress is that; in Rwanda, the youth are a critical constituent of the nation’s considerations and are important stakeholders of national development program.

Capacity building of the youth through inclusive national policies contributed to youth development, and continues to be a critical consideration of national politics.

When the youth benefit from national politics, the country benefits even more. Sustaining the current rhythm remains a generational challenge of our youths.