As the country strives towards strengthening the education sector, by delivering quality education for Rwandan children, different stakeholders should also play their respective roles to help government achieve this much revered goal. Especially, if they have made pledges to the government in this regard.

We base this on the revelation that was made in the ongoing Education Sector Review Meeting that ends today, that some development partners were not honouring their pledges to the sector, an issue listed as one of the impediments in the education sector reform.

The importance of education is quite clear as we see in the UN Millennium Development Goals, which list access to universal primary education as goal number two, to be achieved by the Year 2015.

On its part the Rwandan government has put in place an ambitious education framework, that will see the country not only deliver universal access to education, but improve on the quality of graduates from the various education institutions. 

Among these are the Nine-Year Basic Education Programme and the One- Laptop- Per Child programmes, which are poised to strengthen Rwanda’s aspirations of becoming a knowledge based economy.

In this regard development partners should realise that, the only way countries can pull themselves out of poverty, is by investing in key sectors such as education.

This is the only way of breaking the vicious cycle, of poverty and aid dependency, because a literate citizenry can formulate its own national survival policies towards prosperity.

Most countries that have done well globally, have done so, not necessarily because they are endowed with vast natural resources, no, they have invested in literate citizens. 

Ends