President Paul Kagame, yesterday, received over 50 staff of the African Governance Initiative (AGI). The group is in Kigali for a week-long training workshop code-named “Govstock”. Founded by Tony Blair, and with a presence in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, Malawi and South Sudan, AGI aims at strengthening the impact of governments’ projects. This year’s Govstock will mark the fifth anniversary of AGI and will take place in Rwanda, the first country to establish partnership with AGI. Delivering “We started here in Rwanda and the inspiration for our first programme came from the Government of Rwanda, so this is an opportunity to come back to where it all began. We discussed a range of things with President Kagame around the country’s ownership of infrastructural projects and regional development,” Nick Thompson, CEO of AGI, said in an interview yesterday. “We are part of government’s programme for strategic capacity building, which is working to build capacity and deliver government’s priorities in energy, mining, agriculture and investment. So the impact we seek is in the capacity of those institutions to deliver.” According to the Minister for Finance Claver Gatete, the AGI is results driven. “The discussions were on how our partnership can further strengthen government’s capacity to deliver projects that will lead to economic and social transformation,” Gatete said. Since its founding in 2008, AGI advisors have grown from 10 to a team of over 50 experts from different countries.
