Rwandans will on Friday August 5, gather in their respective communities to celebrate Umuganura, or the National Harvest Day, one of the most important cultural holidays in Rwanda. For many Rwandans, the event is a deserved holiday to celebrate the achievements families have registered over the past one year, not just farmers, as was the traditional practice. The event is a reincarnation of a centuries-old annual traditional feast of first harvest that was widely observed to thank God for the good harvest and to rally citizens to work harder during the coming season. However, while it is important to celebrate achievements, such events should also serve as an opportunity to remind ourselves as a country that the journey to where we want to be is still long, but we are on the right track. To be able to continue on this trajectory, we must aim for a better and bigger harvest for the next Umuganura. To achieve this, every citizen must play their role to ensure that the next harvest is more than the current one. Conversely, the day serves as an opportunity to reaffirm our strong sense of community and belief in our individual and collective capacity to steer Rwanda to greatness, each successive generation playing its part in this enduring commitment. This, however, calls for a deliberate effort to inculcate the noble values that Umuganura – and indeed other cultural events – embodies, not just during the annual celebrations but continuously, whether at school, in the community, or in the workplace. Furthermore, occasions like Umuganura should inspire great innovations to accelerate the country’s growth. For instance, with creativity around culinary art, traditional dishes that are literally only recognised on Umuganura (like sorghum bread) are potential alternatives to expensive food imports (like grain), which have been hard to come by in recent days, whose scarcity was even exacerbated by the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Finally, the day must serve as an opportunity to reaffirm our strong sense of community and belief in our individual and collective capacity to steer Rwanda to greatness, each successive generation playing its part in this enduring commitment. Indeed, sustaining the values that Umuganura represents is a responsibility that we should continuously pass on to young generations, thereby guaranteeing their continued role in Rwanda’s future.
