Across Rwanda’s villages, many development projects, from water taps to early childhood centres and savings groups, reflect the country’s ongoing efforts to improve daily life. Yet, like in many development contexts worldwide, some initiatives face challenges in achieving their full potential.

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The organisations behind them often produce polished reports, glowing evaluations, and ambitious five-year plans. They hold launch events, ribbon cuttings, and photo sessions celebrating the arrival of a new strategy. Yet few ever celebrate results, because too often, meaningful results never come. The children who should be learning, the families who should have clean water, and the women who hoped to build livelihoods through savings groups see little real change. The plans look perfect everywhere except where they matter most: in the lives of the people they were created to serve.

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At the 18th Unity Club Forum, President Paul Kagame posed a question that lingers uneasily in the development world: "Can anyone here point to a country truly transformed by an NGO?”

It was not an indictment but a challenge, to confront the gap between strategy and impact, and to acknowledge how planning that ignores context edges dangerously close to modern colonialism.

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I have seen this pattern repeatedly. Strategies are written in offices far removed from rural realities, projecting 2030 aspirations built on tools, staffing, and systems that resemble 2010. The math never adds up. Planners imagine transformation while relying on the same outdated capacities that have failed for years.

And when "community consultations” are held, they often feature the wrong people. Absent are those who actually live the issues; mothers managing water shortages, girls missing school, youth navigating unemployment, teachers overwhelmed by scarce resources, and local leaders juggling impossible trade-offs. Their exclusion is not a footnote; it is the reason so many strategies fail before they begin.

The problem is amplified by the consultants hired to guide these processes. Many arrive with impeccable academic credentials but limited field experience. They can craft technically flawless documents filled with frameworks and indicators. What they often overlook are the most basic questions: does the NGO have the staff to deliver this? The funding? The skills? The time? Without these realities, a strategy becomes a wish list, one that impresses donors while doing little for the people.

The consequences are visible everywhere. Consider an NGO that has operated in the country for more than 10 years but struggles to name even 10 genuine success stories of their own. Budgets are vast, timelines are ambitious, and activities wide-ranging. Yet small, overstretched teams are expected to deliver transformative results. When external funding inevitably shifts, everything collapses, leaving communities stuck between promises made and promises abandoned.

The public sector also bears responsibility. When NGOs complete projects, whether building water systems, training savings groups, or initiating education interventions, government institutions should be ready to integrate and sustain them. Too often, they are not. The result is development without continuity: projects end, staff leave, and communities are left to start over.

Rwanda’s NGO law attempts to safeguard continuity by requiring that a dissolved NGO’s assets be transferred to another organisation with a similar mission. It is a good step, but insufficient. Communities need continuity of activities and support, not just continuity of assets. A water tap is useless if no one maintains it; a savings group cannot thrive if no one provides oversight; an early childhood centre cannot function without trained staff and public-sector integration.

The rigidity of many strategic plans only deepens the disconnect between intention and impact. Traditional five-year frameworks often falter in a world where social norms shift rapidly, technology evolves at breakneck speed, and political and economic conditions are in constant flux. By the time such a plan reaches its midpoint, some assumptions may already be outdated and by its conclusion, much of it can be irrelevant. For strategy to matter, it must function as a living document, regularly reviewed, responsive to new evidence, and flexible enough to adapt as circumstances change.

Clarity matters as well. Endless matrices and jargon-laden documents may satisfy donors but they rarely guide meaningful action. An output, a school built, means little without an outcome: children learning, thinking, and thriving. If we are to answer President Kagame’s question, development should not be measured by only the number of meetings held or reports submitted, but by lives improved in real life.

President Kagame’s question should prompt reflection, not defensiveness. Are NGOs, governments, and international agencies designing strategies for their own reporting requirements, or for the communities whose futures hang in the balance? Are they willing to share power with the people they serve? Are they ready to replace donor-driven planning with community-driven priorities?

When strategy is immersed in context, transparency, and accountability, it can drive profound change. When it is not, it becomes a polished form of colonialism, development that looks convincing on paper but collapses in practice.

The path forward is clear.

It begins with genuine immersion in communities and with aligning ambition to the resources required to achieve it - human capacity, tools, and systems that match the realities of 2030, not those of 2010. Strategy cannot hinge on outdated skills or obsolete structures.

When organisations invest in the right people and the right infrastructure, strategy stops serving institutions and starts serving people. Only then does development become what it was meant to be: empowerment, not a modernised echo of colonial power dynamics.

The writer is a management consultant and strategist.