Smart moves

Some 154 education personnel from Zimbabwe landed in Rwanda on October 19.  This was a result of the Memorandum of Understanding signed between both countries in December 2021, following Kigali’s request for quality teachers.

The recruited competent education personnel will be employed as mentors of Rwanda’s teaching staff in various areas. They will be evaluated every year so as to verify whether they meet expectations, even after the exams and interviews they passed during the selection process.

Their contracts – with a salary between Rwf600,000 and Rwf2 million – allow them to work for two years, renewable upon satisfactory performance. They will be deployed in various institutions around the country.

According to Rwanda’s Ministry of Education, 135 of the educators go to 16 Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs), six in three Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) schools with rare skills requirements,11 in three Integrated Polytechnic Regional Centres (IPRC), and three university lecturers will teach in the University of Rwanda - College of Medicine and Health Sciences (UR-CMHS).

The request of teachers was made during the Rwanda-Zimbabwe Trade and Investment Conference held in Kigali in September 2021, with agriculture, energy, education, transport, construction as well as the private sector as the sectors of mutual interest.

Basically, on education, despite an economic collapse in the past two decades, Zimbabwe’s literacy rate reached 94 percent in 2022, making it one of the African countries with highly educated people.

Rwanda is keen on increasing its literacy rate currently at 71 per cent. Rwanda had initially targeted 500 teachers from Zimbabwe as part of the efforts to cover education gaps.

This smart approach will bring multiple impacts to Rwanda’s education sector as a large number of the Zimbabwean education personnel will be facilitating to upgrade TTCs’ staff, which projects to strategic outcomes.

The country’s TTC schools are the main source of educators on which Rwanda depends. Once this project delivers the goods, and it will, in just about five years time, every coming academic year will churn out well trained educators.

Human development is one of Rwanda’s Vision 2050 pillars, as this remarkable country eyes universal access to high quality education. The Rwandan education system will be market-led to match Rwandans’ skills with modern industries and services that drive the economy. These objectives will be built upon a foundation of strong macroeconomic fundamentals and effective institutions supported by positive values and leveraging on home grown solutions. Way to go Rwanda. You just keep on doing the right things.