How liberation inspired Rwandan diaspora to pack their bags and return home

Nation-building in a post-conflict environment requires bold measures for national reconstruction, rehabilitation, and economic recovery and growth. In particular, African countries emerging from conflict need an enormous effort to make headway in socioeconomic growth. When Rwanda embarked on the liberation struggle some three decades ago, it needed its diaspora both in the armed campaign itself and during the subsequent recovery and reconstruction effort. Many members of the Rwandan diaspora eventually became central to the nation-rebuilding effort as many were highly skilled professionals having mostly attained education away from home. Take Prof. Manasse Mbonye for example. He grew up as a refugee in neighbouring Uganda and later Kenya in the 60s and 70s, before moving to Sierra Leone in the early 80s. There, he attended Fourabay College. Later, he would move to the United States for further studies. Mbonye completed his Masters from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, and went on to pursue his PhD in Connecticut in 1995, where he was chosen as University of Connecticut PhD of the Year (1996). The now-president of the Rwanda Academy of Science (RAS) then went on to undertake key tasks in the US where he continued to hone his skills, first as a lecturer of Physics at University of Connecticut, University of Michigan, and Rochester Institute of Technology. Later, he would work as a Senior Research Associate at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Centere, where he specialised in cosmic dynamics and black holes. “I think, on average, living anywhere is like living anywhere else. There are pros and cons. But like they say, East, West, home is best,” he says. Mbonye returned to Rwanda in 2012 to “support national development”. The same year he was hired as the Vice Rector at the then National University of Rwanda. For him, returning home was in the end a straightforward decision to make. “It was an easy decision to make because I finally had a country to call my own, a right I had previously been denied.” “I needed to come home to make my own contribution in building our country and live here, at home,” he says. But even long before returning home, Mbonye was active in the Rwandan community abroad with whom they worked to make a contribution to nation building. For instance, he founded Rwanda Education Reconstruction Effort (RERE) as far back as 1995. Through this, he recalls, they were able to help collect computers, printers, and books for then National University of Rwanda (NUR) and Kigali Institute of Science, Technology and Management (KIST). Then, in 2005, he would establish the RIT-Rwanda Collaboration (RRC), which provided (and still provides) opportunities to train Rwandan engineers and scientists. Drawing from RPA’s bold initiative Brain drain from African countries, especially fragile and conflict-torn states, can be attributed to a combination of factors, such as poor political and economic governance, active conflict, as well as the need for better higher education abroad. According to the African Development Bank (AfDB), about 13 per cent of Sub-Saharan Africans who migrated to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations between 1990 and 2000 were skilled workers. Indeed, African professionals have increasingly taken advantage of the global mobility of labour to practise in more stable economies on the continent or seek opportunities outside the continent. That is the case for Aimable Kimenyi, a software developer who was just 12 years old when the RPA forces liberated the country in 1994. “People who liberated this country showed us what it means to take a bold initiative,” he says. “I was young but I could understand the extraordinary sacrifice that those young men and women took to liberate us.” That is the kind of spirit that inspired Kimenyi to come back to Rwanda after spending years in Canada where he had migrated in 2000 with his parents for greener pastures – like many. The former president of Rwanda Association of Software Developers pursued a double Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Montreal. A lucrative job at Bombardier “There were a lot of temptations that could have made me choose a life in Canada over returning home,” he said, citing good pay and a more comfortable life. “So making a decision to return was one of the hardest things to do.” Kimenyi says he ditched a research job at Bombardier (the Canadian manufacturer of planes and trains) to return home where he thought his work and serve his country. “I remember Bombardier officials came to our University to interest us in joining their research team, and at the same time Canadian Air Force was looking for us (those who performed exceptionally well),” he recalls. Aimable Kimenyi left a lucrative carreer at Bombardier in Canada to return home. When Kimenyi returned to Rwanda, he formed Ishyiga, a software that manages business transactions – presently used in more than 90 pharmacies across Rwanda, 40 per cent in Burundi, and other stock management and retail businesses. His company, Algorithm Inc, a business-to-business based firm, now has 500 customers in Rwanda, 200 in Burundi and 20 in other countries like Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). “I really felt I would rather make a contribution to the growth of Rwanda and Africa as opposed to staying in Canada where perhaps a few would recognise my work,” he says. His company developed the second generation of the electronic billing machines (EBM II) that’s currently used by most firms to declare taxes for Rwanda Revenue Authority. Kimenyi believes that is exactly the kind of aspirations he had when he decided to return home. Abandoned ‘comfortable life’ For 32 years after independence, Rwandans were held hostage to political mediocrity, dictatorships and economic stagnation. As of 1959, thousands of Rwandans had scattered all over neighbouring countries, some going as far as Europe and the Americas to escape persecution by extremist, ethnocentric political leaders. That mess would continue for decades, finally ending with the Liberation Day on July 4, 1994, when thousands of Rwandan liberators marched across the country to stop the Genocide against the Tutsi and set their homeland free. Jacqui Sebageni, an investor in the tourism and hospitality industry, lived in Canada for nearly 15 years before she decided to return home to Rwanda in 2004 – around the time the country was just embarking on an ambitious conservation effort. “It wasn’t like a clear decision to me honestly because I was very comfortable in Canada and I loved what I was doing,” she says of her decision to return to Rwanda. Sebageni worked in Kenya, at Abercrombie & Kent, for almost seven years, rising through the ranks from a customer relations officer to a tours consultant. She then decided to move to Canada and went on to work at Voyages Ideal. The tour and travel operator says she was comfortable living in Montreal, until she was offered a job in Rwanda in 2004, which she doubts whether she actually wanted to do. “But I came anyway, out of curiosity, and when I got here it was unbelievable; reconnecting with everybody and a place you completely belong to. I think there are many places we call home, but “completely belonging” is a whole new thing,” she says. It wasn’t until a few months before Sebageni got acquainted with life back home. She would later meet her subsequent business partner Manzi Kayihura, and the two decided to venture into tourism together. They now own a tour agency, Thousand Hills Africa, which holds exclusive sales channel for Bisate Lodge, a high-end luxury lodge tucked away in the Volcanoes National Park and Magashi Camp in Akagera National Park. When they started out, the country’s tourism industry was really nascent, and looking back, Sebageni compares the situation back then and today as night and day. “There were not many players in terms of tour operators, in terms of guides, hotels and so many other things,” she says. “The tourism association had like 15 members, the guides association was not even there.” She estimates that the guides association now has like 70 members, while the travel and tours association has about 200 members. “You can see how far the industry has come,” she says, citing the role of many people who have contributed in one way or another (including herself, her company having started out with just two people but has since grown to employ 40 people). President’s call prompted her to return home The Government of Rwanda attaches a great deal of importance to the country’s Diaspora communities – often informally described as Rwanda’s Sixth Province. President Paul Kagame’s administration reckons that Diaspora, if fully mobilised, can make a significant contribution to the country’s development through offering their much-needed skills and expertise, remittances, as well as capital investment. As such, the Government has increasingly come up with mechanisms to help make this possible. In 2009, the Rwandan diaspora policy was formulated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. The policy serves as the framework under which Diaspora can meaningfully can make their contribution and it’s been integrated into the national development blueprint. Later, in 2010, the inaugural Rwanda Day– a government-led diaspora mobilisation forum – took place in Brussels, Belgium. Sandrine Uwimbabazi, whose family had fled the country in 1994, was living in Belgium at the time and she attended the event. “At the time, I had a lot of questions around why my family was not returning home to Rwanda and so I had the urge to find out what was it like to be back in Rwanda after many years,” she tells The New Times. Uwimbabazi’s father was a senior commander in the defeated ex-FAR forces and fled with his family in 1994 (when she was just 10), first heading to then Zaire (now DR Congo), then to Kenya, and later to Belgium. “Growing up as a child you always have a lot of questions. Of course, I knew my family left for security reasons but I still felt I needed to connect with my country,” she recalls. At the Rwanda Day in Belgium, she says, she was touched by the message delivered by President Kagame. “He told us that the country was liberated and no Rwandan should be locked out. That cleared the air and provoked further interest in my country,” she recalls. Subsequently, in 2013, Uwimbabazi decided to come visit her motherland despite the disapproval of her family. “But I told them I was old enough to know what’s right and what’s not right.” She would later return to settle home in Rwanda and today she’s the Director of the Rwanda Community Abroad in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “In the end that’s the essence of liberation, when you have a sense of belonging and everyone is enjoying their rights,” she says. She calls on young people to be patriotic and have a sense of belonging and be actively engaged in contributing to continued development and transformation of their country.

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How liberation inspired Rwandan diaspora to pack their bags and return home