TESTIMONY: I Wonder How You Can Do Business In Rwanda Without Connections. As a Rwandan-Canadian citizen who decided to return back to my motherland after living in Canada for more than 10 years. I am here on Taarifa with the hope of releasing my frustration and hopefully get some answers. Long story short, ever since I was a little girl, I loved my motherland, Rwanda. My parents sent me to Canada for education. However, I always knew I would come back to contribute to building my country.
Three years ago, I had a dream to come live and work for my beautiful Rwanda. During those three years, I have tried many different big projects (because I can’t help but to think big and my spirit of entrepreneurship ne me lessera pas être une funcionnelle) and many of them were incredibly innovative which happened to fall in our country’s vision, but none of them ever went through for me.
They were instead taken by those in power that I presented them to (pretty much stole my ideas and never credited me). My question is; is there anybody who can relate to what I am talking about here? Anyone already experienced a similar thing? If yes, how do you all keep courage? Is there a code? Right now, I am very disappointed and frustrated because, apparently from what many said, is that to be able to do big projects here in Rwanda, you have to know someone in a higher position or you have to be a child of “someone in high powers. Unfortunately, I am a lady of principles and one of my life’s principles tells me that everyone deserves what he/she worked hard for, plus I don’t know or relate to those people in government’s higher position in order to be allowed to own my projects and contribute to my motherland’s development.
My question is; if one can only be allowed to do great things as it is in her/his heart for her/his beautiful country when she/he is only a child of someone powerful in the country, can you then, you powerful people adopt us who are not from powerful families, but yet very intelligent, so we too can get the opportunity to use our talents, strengths, and wisdom in a bigger scale than we are capable of for the contribution to the development of the country we love? I love Rwanda so much and I always have ideas flowing only to do my part in making it the best country. I am not a politician, I am a young entrepreneur with thousands of innovative ideas, all I know and feel as my greatest gift is creating and running big businesses.
I just wish things were a little straightforward with organizations/institutions, etc here in Rwanda and allow simple but yet capable people like me to also walk towards our dreams of being part of making our country great, economically.
What frustrates me a lot is that most institutions will invite you to do presentations of a project, and after the presentation, they will all tell you how you have an amazing project that it is exactly one of what our country needs and they will tell you to keep working on it that they will definitely call you for business. A few months later, you hear that they have given that business to someone else who wasn’t even ready, who didn’t have the project needed ready, but they will get that someone they want to start developing the same project like yours and wait for him/her to finish it and get the offer. This happens a lot within public and private organizations here in Rwanda.
As much as I hate to accept it, but it looks like what I used to hear when I was back in Canada that the code to launch a big project here in Rwanda, one has to have a general, a minister, or other “powerful person” on her/his side. That it is never been based on how wise you can be, talented you can be, or what you are capable of as a Rwandan. It is rather based on who you are? How powerful or influential you are or who do you know. I am not here to confirm that say, and I am not here to dismiss it either, and even if it may sound in my writing as if I am putting all this wrongdoing on Rwanda, I still know that we can not generalize and put all these wrongdoings on Rwanda as a whole, it is rather at a personal level (some employees) yet the outcome is a bad image for the whole country.
It is just like that Rwandan proverb that says: “Abumwe agatukisha bose”…And I wonder how us who don’t have parents or family members that are generals, ministers, or who are “powerful in otherways” etc will get opportunities to give our country what we are capable of in terms of building it not to do what is available or designated to us, but to actually do what we are talented for and give it all we got. I am writing this note frustrated and disappointed, and most importantly sad because I used to encourage my talented young Rwandan friends and acquaintances to come back home and built our motherland, but for the past one year, I’ve been avoiding such conversations with them because I don’t want to tell them my painful experience so far and I don’t want to lie to them either that things are good that they should invest their time, knowledge, money in projects to build their country.
There is already one family that moved back here and they used to ask me how it is like to come back home and I remember saying that it will be the best thing to do (even though I was struggling to own my projects, but I refused to use my bad experience to discourage them; I was like maybe they won’t experience the same). They are here now, and still, I haven’t made a single complaint to them, I just pray that they will not have an unpleasant experience. I want them to find better than they had in Canada. They are extremely smart people too, I want Rwanda to benefit from their knowledge. September 21, 2020, I received another bad news that after months of working on upgrading my 4th innovative project trying to get it customized for this particular institution, which had already shown interest and was in need of my service, and after months of back and forth conversations about working together, this private institution decided to choose another company here which in the first place was not in the bidding, which doesn’t even have that exact project ready like mine, and that kind of project isn’t something that takes a month or two to build, it takes several months if not years.
I and my engineers spent over two years programming and took what I had as an idea a turned it into an incredible tangible tool. I invested a lot of money to have it completed as it is today, and now by the time I think that finally, all that hard work is going to start paying off, the client decided to follow the code: “who is this person to give this business? Is he/she from that group of people that are entitled to get big projects here? So, the contract went to another company, and this company is apparently being offered that contract because it is owned by powerful people in Rwanda, and they want and will get the contract regardless of whether they meet all the bidding requirements or not.
This was the fourth big project that I presented and dreamed to run in Rwanda, and now it is again taken by others who don’t deserve it more than I ( they don’t deserve it because I was the first with that kind of technology here in Rwanda, I’ve been developing it for three years now, I am the first to present it to those that needed it, I invested thousands of dollars and time on it, and now that finally, it was ready to serve my Rwanda, that “power supremacy group” is taking me and my team out (they will rather make the institutions in need to wait months as they build the similar project as mine than to let us merit our sweat). I find this very unfair. And my question is; how do you keep your mind from giving up on your dream of wanting to participate in the development of your country? This is my first time ever writing a complaint on social media, I have been trying to hang tight for the past three years, but I guess starting today I should look the reality right in the face and act accordingly.
My best option now is to go back to Canada and give my strength and knowledge to it, at least there nobody stands in the way of what I would like to accomplish (the obstacles are different factors than here) though my desire had always been to work for my lovely motherland. But, I would like to keep hope that maybe one day it will be possible to come back and work for my country and be able to contribute to its growth.
To those who might be going through what I went through, stay strong, and don’t you lose trust in yourselves. Keep being innovative, keep educating yourselves, become experts and masters of your area of expertise, keep loving your country and your leaders, fear God, don’t lose hope, and eventually one day your hard work will pay off. Thank you for reading and I am sorry to vent on you. Stay blessed all.
Editor: Betty Niwemugeni has narrated and shared her experiences with us. We are investigating all her claims.
