Prof. Richard Miller Kobe City and Kigali City signed joint declarations of partnership on May 9, this year to “encourage business, academic and public sectors to flourish”. What does it mean? There are a variety of reasons that municipal governments choose to ink these kinds of agreements, including opportunities to travel and grow contacts. It is one thing for high level governmental officials to sign memoranda of understanding (MoUs) and to have photo ops, but, they are in positions of leadership. Citizens of the two cities must also think of ways that they might contribute and to lay groundwork and mobilize to really take advantage of opportunities and keep these positive steps moving forward. There are a number of opportunities that can come of this type of arrangement; educational, cultural, and economic. As an introduction, Kobe is a city of 1.5 million people situated between the sea and the mountains in the central part of Japan. It forms part of a greater metropolis, including the cities of Kyoto and Osaka, in the Kansai region, the second largest in Japan (after the Kanto region which includes Tokyo). Within this region, there is easy movement of people and goods with extensive highways, container shipping facilities and public transportation (there are over 25 different train lines with each line having as many as 15 routes or trains each). The regional economy is the 2nd largest in Japan with a population of around 21 million and a GDP that is roughly 100 times larger than Rwanda at the present. As Prof. Rwigamba Balinda, the founding rector of the Kigali Independent University (ULK), said to me in March, “We have much that can be learned from Japan, after they built themselves up after the end of the WWII into an industrialized nation in a few short decades. When considering the atomic bombs, it is quite incredible.” All successful countries have extensive networks of academic, governmental, business, and non-profit organizations, and these all start from somewhere. In 2014, the then Rwandan ambassador to Japan attended a conference that I was chairing where he gave a very informative plenary speech that sparked a lot of interest in Rwanda and encouraged a number of students and academics to reassess their assumptions about Rwanda and consider becoming more involved in the country. There are a number of resources that can be accessed to promote mutual connections; from the Japanese Embassy in Kigali to the Rwandan Embassy in Tokyo, there is interest in helping citizens in both cities to connect. For business, there are possible access points related to everything, from urban development planning to transportation infrastructure. In addition, there are cultural and educational benefits through exchanges between institutions such as zoos, schools, museums, and cultural clubs. For myself as an academic, the mere fact that the mayor of Kobe came to Kigali and was able to report back how wonderful the city and its people were was instrumental in getting more Japanese families to consider visiting East Africa. An increase in the exchange of information is important because, unfortunately, the little news about Africa that reaches Japan is mostly bad news. And, too many people have a hard time distinguishing between the Rwanda of two decades ago and that of now, or between this country and others on the continent that are geographically and socially quite far away. This leads to a large amount of misinformation that flows through the general public. In education, students of all levels are excited to learn and exchange ideas together. This can be conducted from the elementary level to post-doctorate studies. Over the past two months, at my institution, I have encouraged over 130 undergraduate university students in Kobe to work on research projects about Rwanda and East Africa. My students commented that before the project Rwanda was almost completely unknown or unfamiliar to them; the only way that there was any recognition of it was from the social studies of war and peace. After working on their projects almost everyone of them wants to visit. They were impressed by how clean it is, how quickly the economy is growing and how gender-equal the society has become. Japan, the 3rd largest economy in the world, with an aging population that are eager and able to travel, affords a huge potential to the travel industry (the world’s largest growing industry). The average Japanese retiree-tourist spends a substantial amount while travelling. Although there currently are no direct flights to Rwanda from Japan, there are many easy connections via major international hubs such as Dubai. It took a lot of courage and foresight for Kobe’s Mayor Hisamoto and Kigali’s Mayor Mukaruliza to reach out and forge these ties.So, ask yourself what you can do to benefit from this, as the path has been opened. Democracy is not about letting leaders make a decision and then just waiting for things to happen. Collectively, we need to make them happen. The path has been cleared, but unless it is used, it will succumb to weeds and undergrowth and become overgrown again in a short period of time. Without people on both sides, both in Kobe and in Kigali putting in effort –there is a risk of the agreement unraveling and all the planning and work made by the leadership of the two cities would be for naught. The writer is a Canadian scholar currently working as an associate professor at a university in Japan. He has conducted regular visits to Rwanda and has given talks at the University of Rwanda and at the Kigali Independent University.
