Umushyikirano, one of the most important fixtures on Rwanda’s national calendar, has come and gone. But the lessons from two days of intense and honest conversations will linger far longer than the event itself. ALSO READ: Reframing the One Stop Center is not a retreat from ambition Senior leaders, including the Head of State, the Prime Minister, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, set the tone by outlining the realities Rwanda faces and the priorities shaping its development agenda. Ministers, heads of institutions, private sector leaders, and civil society representatives then came together to diagnose challenges and chart a way forward. VIDEO: Kagame: Leaders must be held accountable for delayed projects Yet as insightful as these exchanges were, the most sobering and illuminating contributions came from ordinary citizens. One by one, citizens shared their experiences, some hopeful, others frustrated. They spoke with honesty about what works and what doesn’t. One young entrepreneur, Chey Muvunyi, who runs a cosmetics business, captured a frustration familiar to many Rwandans: poor service delivery and the confusion that comes with navigating public institutions. She described being sent back and forth between institutions while seeking a single certification, most recently at Rwanda Food and Drugs Authority. Each time she complied with a requirement, new ones emerged only after the previous conditions had been met. Frustrated, the young entrepreneur could not believe that an entire institution lacked clarity on a business model that, in her view, was simple enough for anyone paying close attention to understand. Her experience reflects a broader reality. More often than not, ordinary citizens are forced through complex and exhausting bureaucratic processes just to obtain basic certifications that enable them to pursue their dreams. In response, Rwanda Development Board (RDB) pointed out that a One Stop Centre had been created precisely to address such challenges. However, the President raised a critical question: if such a solution exists, why did the entrepreneur not know about it? The question went even deeper. Why was she not informed, at the very beginning, that she could access all required certifications at the One Stop Centre instead of being tossed from one institution to another? The answer may lie in a common leadership blind spot where leaders assume they already understand the lived experiences of citizens and businesses. For executives who spend most of their time in offices focused on policies, reports, and presentations, detachment from on-the-ground realities faced by citizens and businesses can emerge quickly. This disconnect worsens when some leaders, entrusted with serving citizens, begin to carry themselves with an inflated sense of status, where protocol seems more important than accessibility, and offices feel distant rather than open. When leaders strip away the celebrity factor, an important thing happens. They become pairs of eyes and ears in rooms where things break or on ground where actual work takes place. In other words, leaders need to be on the front lines. When leaders are physically present on the frontline, the quality of information they receive is different. When you sit right next to a young entrepreneur like Muvunyi, you stop thinking in bullet points and start thinking about how their pain can be turned into profit. When leaders are humble enough to travel to meet a community healthcare worker in a remote rural area who’s trying to save two crying babies, they stop thinking in software and start thinking in seconds and relief. The quiet genius of this approach is that it shrinks the distance between the vision and the reality. As a leader, spending even half a day in your One Stop Centre or a few hours with an entrepreneur who’s trying to get their product to the market, hits different. The concerns you saw as ‘complaints’ become faces and names. For Rwanda, there is already a proven template that leaders can emulate. When the president takes weeks or months traveling across the country through citizen outreach programmes, it is a sign of a leader who understands why being on the frontline makes sense. This approach gives leaders a chance to put themselves in the shoes of the very people they serve. They ask basic questions, and hear what ordinary people go through, before they go back to the drawing board. Julius Bizimungu is a Business Editor at The New Times.
