KIGALI - Today, all roads lead to Rubavu District as local and central government leaders head west for the 8th Annual Leadership retreat which kicks off, Wednesday.

President Paul Kagame, is expected to chair the three-day retreat, during which the government leadership will assess and evaluate the progress made on the implementation of the resolutions of the previous retreat, and pave the way forward.

In an interview with The New Times, Protais Musoni, the Minister in charge of Cabinet Affairs said that this year’s retreat is "special and critical” because it comes with a new breed of mayors and local government leaders.

According to Musoni, the 8th retreat, which is the first in the new 7-year Presidential term, will mainly focus on job creation and increasing Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), among other things.

"It is that time of the year when people come together to evaluate and assess what was done in the past year, what didn’t go well and why, and also set targets for the next year,” Musoni said.

"We have several key issues which will be discussed including increasing the number of viable SMEs, wealth creation, quality of education, energy, growing investment, maintaining the economic progress and good governance, among others,” the Minister added.

Improving local and international understanding of Rwanda’s governance and using ICT to accelerate delivery in all the identified priorities will also feature.

A set of strategic priorities that are central to the country’s economic and social development will be discussed and mechanisms to implement them will be sought during the retreat.
 
Rwanda’s current priorities are clearly identified in the new seven year programme.

The Leadership Retreat will review and discuss innovative ways to deliver on the goals of boosting exports and increasing domestic production of consumer goods through SMEs, and job creation.

Discussions will focus on identifying the real barriers to delivery for each priority and agree the steps that need to be taken to improve results.
 
Prime Minister, Bernard Makuza, will highlight the progress made in implementing the priorities from the 2010 Leadership Retreat, the challenges that were faced and the lessons learnt for the future in order to accelerate the country’s development and ensure a prosperous future for all Rwandans.

Implementation plans coming out of this year’s retreat will be central to action plans for ministries and agencies in the 2011/12 financial year.

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