The Kigali City Council (KCC) has announced plans to invest Rwf1.4 billion in job creation initiatives in its 2010/2011 budget.

The biggest portion of this will be committed to the development of the city’s basket-weaving project, known as, Agaseke Promotion Project, with specific emphasis on innovative weaving techniques.

Agaseke project brings together about 3000 weavers, some of them former sex workers and Genocide survivors.

Considering that each weaver, sometimes, makes as much as Rwf80, 000 per month, the nascent project is undoubtedly gainful. Now, with new weaving skills, every member should be able to earn much more from their hard work.

KCC intends to spend Rwf 20.2 million to help hawkers organise themselves into cooperative societies. This is a noble and laudable cause, not only because hawking is unacceptable in this city, but it also means more profits for business owners. The Government will, as well, benefit through taxation.

All the provinces and districts should pick a leaf from KCC and make substantial investments in employment opportunities. This will help address the problem of rural-urban migration, which leads to population explosion and compromises security in cities, and negatively affects productivity in the countryside. The more unemployment is cut back, the closer we shall get to Vision 2020.

It has been said time and again that Rwandans should endeavour to create jobs as opposed to seeking them. It is known that the public sector can only employ a handful of people, and yet the size of our private sector remains too small to offer many jobs.

While the stakeholders should scale up their support for job creation initiates, Rwandans, particularly the youth, should join cooperatives and benefit from economies of scale. 

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