A Call to Conscience: Reimagining Service and Governance in Rwanda
When President Paul Kagame addressed the 18th Unity Club Forum last week, his words carried a weight that resonated deeply. His challenge was not just about economics, but about the spirit of a nation. “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?” This question is more than rhetorical; it’s a call to action.
Kagame 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.” This metaphor highlights the need for inner strength and perseverance. The question of where our fight lies should disturb every public servant, policymaker, private sector actor, and citizen. It comes at a time when the latest Rwanda Governance Scorecard once again exposes persistent weaknesses in service delivery and economic governance. For over a decade, these areas have lagged behind others.
While Rwanda remains secure, stable, and ambitious, there is still a slow response to the everyday frustrations of citizens whose problems are often partially solved or ignored until they reach the President himself. This is not a critique from the outside, but a confession from within. Too often, 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.
The Governance Scorecard: A Mirror, Not a Verdict
The Governance Scorecard serves as a mirror, reflecting a nation that has built systems but still wrestles with uneven delivery. Digital tools exist, yet paper files still dominate. 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, but inertia within the system below.
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. Listening to public officials appearing before the Public Accounts Committee reveals a familiar pattern: 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,” and so on. What is missing is neither structure nor policy, but initiative, coordination, and internal resolve to act.
Evolving Service Delivery
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.
Citizens are changing fast. Educated, connected beyond our borders, and increasingly impatient, they expect clarity, speed, and dignity. When an entrepreneur spends months chasing 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 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.
Rethinking Accountability
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.
A New Fight for the Future
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.
