Rwanda’s creative economy is growing, but it will only last if we start treating expertise as what it is: professional, valuable, and worthy of fair compensation.
Not long ago, I invited a friend — a respected MC — to support an event I was organising. I expected enthusiasm, but what I received was a polite decline: no clear budget, no logistical support. My first instinct was hurt but sitting with her reasoning, I arrived somewhere more useful than wounded pride. She was right and her refusal pointed to a truth that Rwanda’s growing cultural economy can no longer afford to ignore.
Talent is not charity, time is not free, the people who make our literary festivals, book launches, and panel discussions come alive — the MCs, journalists, photographers, authors asked to lend their names and voices — are professionals. They prepare, they invest, they carry the weight of an event, often invisibly. Expecting them to do so without clarity on compensation is not a celebration of community spirit, It is an extraction dressed up as one.
Consider what it actually means when an MC agrees to host your event. They are not simply showing up and speaking, they are researching your speakers, studying your programme, spending money on transport and appropriate attire, giving up time they could spend on paid work, they are lending their credibility to your stage. When we expect all of this as a favor, we are communicating loudly that we do not understand the value of what we are asking for.
The same logic extends across the sector, Journalists who cover cultural events are not providing free publicity — they are exercising editorial judgment and lending institutional weight to stories that might otherwise go untold. When media engagement is treated as a promotional favor rather than a professional exchange, coverage suffers, credibility suffers, and eventually contributors stop showing up: not out of spite, but out of necessity.
Cities are getting expensive, the cost-of-living rises, and professional development costs money. Showing up costs money, when events hosted by organisations with paying partners and sponsors still expect key contributors to absorb their own costs, something has gone badly wrong with how we understand value.
None of this is an argument against generosity or mutual support. There will always be room for collaboration, for emerging voices given platforms before they can command fees, for genuine favors between people who want to help one another. But generosity cannot be the architecture of an entire sector, It can only be the ornament on a structure otherwise built to last.
What we need is not complicated; organisers must ask, before approaching any professional contributor: what are we offering, who bears the cost, and have we said so clearly? Written agreements — even simple ones — replace assumptions with shared understanding.
Sponsors and cultural institutions must build contributor compensation into budgets as a default, not an afterthought. And we need a cultural norm that treats expertise as something earned and therefore owed fair treatment.
Rwanda’s literary sector is telling important stories and bringing Rwandan voices into conversations that reach far beyond our borders. That is worth protecting but we will not protect it by burning out the professionals who make it possible. We will protect it by building the financial and logistical infrastructure that allows people to keep doing what they do best — year after year — without wondering whether they can afford to.
My friend who declined my invitation did not let me down. She taught me something. The most professional thing a person can do is know their worth — and the most professional thing an organizer can do is meet them there.
The author is a publisher and bookseller.