This week Lord Valentine Cecil, Chairperson of the Eastern Africa Association floated what I thought was a brilliant idea, marketing Rwanda as a potential retirement destination for pensioners in Europe. Cecil made the remark while presiding over a meeting at Mille Collines hotel in which about 40 investors representing European firms were briefed by government officials about investment opportunities in Rwanda. I saw Clare Akamanzi, the operations chief at Rwanda development board nod her head in apparent approval of the idea. Apparently Cecil himself was surprised he hadn’t thought about it before. “You have most of the features that make an ideal place for retirement including safety, cleanliness and warm weather,” he remarked. His remark was inspired by something Akamanzi had said while giving the guests an overview about Rwanda as being the safest place for girls to live and walk at any time of the night without risking being assaulted. Actually, Rwanda is not only safe for girls but also boys, men and women, foreigners, everybody which is why Gallup’s World Poll of 2012 ranked the country the safest on the continent. Gallup found that Rwandan respondents felt a huge sense of personal security in their neighborhoods and expressed confidence in the State’s ability to manage crime and law enforcement. Now, you have heard of countries where people are often mugged in broad day light! But perhaps the most terrifying of all is a recent incident in Johannesburg in which a reporter was mugged, live on TV as he prepared to file a news report. If it’s your dad or grandma retiring, you obviously don’t want them to end up in a place like that! I think us who live in Kigali take the security we enjoy for granted, but we shouldn’t be considering what folks elsewhere have to contend with. Security, crime prevention and law enforcement are some of the most expensive elements on which governments spend and in Rwanda, I think the results are visible to everyone who has been here for even the shortest duration. Personally, I have never been mugged in this town and I have never registered fears of ever being mugged by anyone yet I have often wandered off in the nights or to isolated neighborhoods in the name of sight-seeing. As a part-time resident of Kampala, I have always feared venturing out alone especially at night for fear of walking into a band of bandits. I remember an incident in 2011, it was 5pm on a Sunday, and the traffic on the streets of Kampala was light as not many people were about town given that it was a weekend but I needed to buy a bus ticket to travel to Kigali that night. As I walked on the street, right in front of a bank, with an armed guard on duty, a guy emerged out of the corridors and bravely came towards me; I was carrying a duffle bag over my left shoulder and a smart phone in my right hand. The guy approached me and without a trace of shame or fear hit my hand so hard in order to force the phone to fall for him to grab and run or rather walk away with it. Luckily, my grip was firm, the phone never fell; anger so high, I formed a punch which I quickly threw at the guy’s jaw at the same time I sent a low flying kick into the outlaw’s groin which sent him into a painful crumble. He had chosen a wrong customer! But had it been another person, say a woman or weaker person, they would probably have lost their belongings becoming the latest statistic of hundreds who get mugged on a daily. To make matters worse, the armed guard at the bank didn’t even budge as to try and intervene; I was totally on my own. I have heard dozens of similar tales experienced by people in different cities but not one of them from Kigali. Security, stability and safety are things that every Rwandan should be proud about, they are things we should be extremely protective of and now that there are people looking for a place with such features to retire, we can use them to market Rwanda as one such destination. With hundreds of thousands of dollars in retirement packages, European retirees have money that they can bring into this economy in form of small retirement businesses or spend it sun bathing on our warm resorts. Ecuador, Panama, Mexico and Malaysia top the 2015 list of best places to retire in, according to InternationalLiving.com. No African country is featured but I am sure Rwanda deserves a place on it.
