Editor,

Reference is made to the article, "Report: Nearly half of masters’ degree holders underemployed” (The New Times, January 27).

Allow me to quote this sentence, "...positive attitude towards work, acceptance of responsibility for consequences of action, creativity and empathy”; perhaps these are traits that one learns, not at school but in family, since the early childhood.

Then formal skills progressively learned at various stages of the schooling system would come just as gradual enhancement of what one has already acquired and integrated in body and mind all along the growing up path.

The exclusively western-oriented school system in Rwanda and in Africa is being questioned by some of us, as the main culprit in some of our children’s failure in life. It is, however, about time as well we question our yearning for the alien western-model for upbringing of children.

Maybe the root problem is neither with our youth, nor with potential employers or our school system.

People’s culture and land ought to be the anchors and source of their life and employment. This way, one cannot end up being unemployed or being underemployed. It would be incongruence.

Obviously Rwanda is not the Scottish Highlands, nor the Silicon Valley! Our children shouldn’t be brought up to behave, to live and to seek daily employment as if they belong to those other contexts.

To me, those are just unrealistic dreams. Finally, we shouldn’t always peg our hopes on getting employment from foreign investors, rather we should always look internally and in the region to tackle the unemployment challenged.

Francois-Xavier Nziyonsenga