Tatenda Kanuka, IPD ’17

DPMI Rwanda with Partners in Health

Having read quite a bit on the history, present, and future of Rwanda, I enrolled in the 2017 DPMI-Rwanda program suspecting reality may be different from the glowing stories that hundreds of authors have written.Is Rwanda truly a model society for the rest of the African continent? Could the rest of the continent follow the Rwandan-model successfully? Is the ordinary man on the street feeling this ‘success’ as oft-reported in the New York Times and various other media? These and many other questions were racing through my mind as we landed at Kigali International Airport on Saturday, 31 December 2016 just after midday. It did not take long to feel the ‘Rwandan experience’!

Our group – comprising of five MIIS students and a Partners in Health professional, Adrien, was to come up with a Social Marketing Campaign to help tackle the challenge of malnutrition in Rwinkwavu. While the numbers of malnutrition cases are going down, they are not doing so at the target rate. Could a marketing campaign help raise awareness about malnutrition in the local population and speed-up this downward trend? We worked with various tools – such as Fishbone Analysis, Results Framework in order to correctly diagnose the factors contributing to this challenge.

As we worked on this campaign for Partners In Health in Rwanda my mind kept on coming back to the environment that the program will be implemented in, namely, Rwanda.While it is true that Rwanda was one of the few countries that successfully met the Millennium Development Goals (predecessor to the current SDGs), I approached my research a bit on the ‘suspicious’ side.Was it really the much-vaunted success or another ‘feel-good’ story about the Global South designed to keep hopes alive? I had to engage the youths, the mothers, and indeed the fathers of Rwanda at the slightest opportunity in order to ‘separate fact from fiction’.This had to be done to get a correct sense and feel of the society in order to complement the material and frameworks we worked on in class.

Solidarity – no substitute for it

Even though we were in Rwanda for less than three weeks, one thing remained visible from Kigali to Rwinkwavu – that of a nation working towards a common goal as one and while debates arose here and there, the spirit of oneness was apparent. This, I believe, is critical for success in implementing developmental projects and could explain why the country continues to surpass various socio-economic targets. How could I forget the smiles that beamed on residents’ faces as I enquired about the Umurenge SACCOs Program (a local micro-finance program) or Umuganda (a modern-day community work program rooted in Rwanda’s traditional practices).

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