When President Paul Kagame addressed the 18th Unity Club Forum last week, his challenge cut through the air like a reckoning. “Some countries that once had economies the size of ours 50 or 60 years ago,” he said, “are now a hundred times larger. What happened to us, as Africans and as Rwandans? And why does that not make you uncomfortable?” ALSO READ: Kagame to leaders: No one from outside will come to save us It wasn’t an economic lecture. It was a call to conscience. He reminded the audience that transformation is not luck; it is struggle. “It’s not the dog in the fight,” he said, “but the fight in the dog.” That question, where is our fight, should disturb every public servant, policymaker, private sector actors, and citizens. It comes as the latest Rwanda Governance Scorecard once again exposes the same weak spots: service delivery and economic governance. For over a decade, those areas have trailed behind the rest. We remain secure, stable, and ambitious, but still too slow to solve the everyday frustrations of citizens whose problems are partially solved or often ignored until they reach the President himself. I write this not as a critique from the outside, but as a confession from within. Too often, some people behave as if systems alone can serve citizens, as if performance contracts, targets, and dashboards are ends in themselves. Yet, service is not a checklist. It is a relationship, between leaders and citizens, between institutions and the people they exist to serve. When that relationship prizes paperwork over purpose, we begin to lose the very “fight” that built this nation in the first place. The Governance Scorecard is a mirror, not a verdict. It reflects a nation that has built systems but still wrestles with uneven delivery. Digital tools exist, yet paper files still dominate. And in some cases, service is treated less as a public duty than as a discretionary act. When citizens must wait for the President’s intervention or visit to communities to have their concerns addressed or disputes resolved, the problem is not absence of leadership, it is inertia within the system below. Our leaders must remember that the true test of governance lies in resolving a citizen’s problem at its source, rather than only after it escalates. ALSO READ: The entitled customer or the misunderstood one? Listen to public officials appearing before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), a familiar pattern emerges: people have become more articulate in explaining problems than in solving them. The vocabulary rarely changes; “I wasn’t fully aware,” “the handover was incomplete,” “resources were insufficient,” “capacity gaps remain,” “our current stock or tools are misaligned with current systems,” or “procedures take too long.” What is missing is neither structure nor policy, but initiative, and coordination, the internal resolve to act, to take ownership of outcomes, and to deliver without waiting for the order not rigidly though. The systems are in place. What they lack is the collective will to coordinate and bring them to life. Truth is that service delivery must evolve. The next frontier is not more complacency, but more coordination and willingness to serve and respond to people’s needs. Discipline has given us order; responsiveness will give us momentum. Accountability made us efficient; outcomes should make us transformative. The citizens are changing fast. Educated, connected beyond our borders, and increasingly impatient, they expect clarity, speed, and dignity. When an entrepreneur spends months chasing on paperwork, or a farmer struggles to verify a land title, it is not policy that fails, but administrative imagination. Bureaucracy must learn agility; authority must rediscover humility. President Kagame’s challenge is not about economics. It is about energy; the inner will that powers nations. When he asks why Africa and specifically, Rwanda, still rely on external aid, he is not rebuking us; he is reminding us that dependence begins in the mind. A country waiting for donors is no different from an office waiting for the President to intervene to resolve a dispute. In both cases, initiative has been outsourced. To change this, we must rethink accountability. True accountability is not upward alone, reporting to supervisors or audits, but outward and downward. It means taking account of citizens’ needs, giving account for decisions, and being held to account by the citizens. That is how the “fight in the nation” becomes sustainable: when power is exercised with citizens, not over them. Service delivery is not a technical exercise, but an honourable act. To serve well is to treat every citizen with the urgency, respect, and attention we demand for ourselves. To lead well is to create space for others to act, to take initiative without distress, and to do what is right without waiting for permission. Rwanda has already proven it can rise when tested, from ashes to stability, from despair to hope. The same resolve that rebuilt our safety and security institutions can rebuild our service culture, in other institutions. The fight in the nation cannot remain the fight of one man. It must be the fight of a system, a living organism that listens, adapts, and serves. What weakens service delivery is not absence of rules, but absence of ownership and spirit. Too often, this void has made Africa dependent, pointing fingers at colonial legacies long gone rather than harnessing courage, ingenuity, and responsibility within us. We have mastered structure; now we must master spirit and channel it to serve. True transformation will not come from more dashboards or scorecards alone. It begins with mindset: excellence will be measured not by procedure, but by solving real problems. Performance must be judged on outcomes, not outputs. A school built is an output; children who can think critically are the outcome. A clinic opened is an output; a mother who survives childbirth is the outcome. Every leader, at every level, must mirror urgency and the will to act, and act swiftly. Globally, nations that sustain progress succeed not through constant oversight, but by embedding accountability into culture. Citizens trust that systems will work even without escalation. In Rwanda, the next frontier is shifting governance from focusing on outputs, projects completed, papers processed, to outcomes: real, tangible improvements in the lives of citizens. Oversight should ensure impact, not just compliance, so every action delivers meaningful results. These are acts of faith, not criticism. Faith that Rwanda’s best years lie ahead. Faith that discipline can be rechannelled toward humanity to deliver the present and the future for Rwanda. Faith that leaders, citizens, and institutions can awaken a new fight, not against enemies alone, but against inertia, indifference, and complacency. The writer is a management consultant and strategist.
