safari :Hi zambian brothers when u say Rwanda is aland of genociders its alie Mr kagame is building up anew rwanda full of patriotic rwandese and freinds, so we may not have skiled, european based profesionals like u but expect asurprise.tunisia ounce thought of a 5-0, Uganda thought 6-0,Ghana the same, Nigeria the same, all where humbled by amavubi, move on guys the all nation is beind you.

BY ANDREW M. MWENDA

On January 18, The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom reported that former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had taken on the role of advisor to the Rwanda government. For a person of Blair’s standing in the world, this is the greatest public relations coup by the Rwandan government.
More critically, it is an endorsement of the leadership of President Paul Kagame. How can a small, poverty stricken country somewhere in Africa, having no minerals and almost of no strategic value in global politics, attract the attention of such an international statesman as Blair? Whenever people of Blair’s standing retire, they join the boards of big corporations.
On January 10, the news media reported that Blair had just been appointed by the world’s leading investment bank, JP Morgan, as senior advisor. Is Rwanda now playing in the same league as JP Morgan? Blair’s appointment follows the general pattern of strategic positioning Rwanda has been doing. The world’s richest man, Bill Gates, has personally been working closely with President Kagame in supporting the health sector in Rwanda. Paul Farmer, a professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard and possibly the world’s leading authority on public health-care in poor settings has been working closely with Kagame to develop one of the most innovative national health insurance systems in the world.
Last June, I spent an evening with Google founder, Larry Page, after he had returned from a visit to Rwanda and Uganda. He told me how impressed he was by Rwanda and how shocked he was by the disorder in Uganda. In April, Kagame had visited Google headquarters in the Silicon Valley where he had lunch with senior executives including the CEO, Eric Schmidt. Deals were signed, among them Google’s promise to provide Rwanda free web-based software. Former US President, Bill Clinton, has been visiting Rwanda regularly since he left the White House to help build their national healthcare system.
Clinton appointed Kagame to the board of the Clinton Global Initiative, a pioneer institution that aims to turn good intentions into real action and results. That Clinton appointed Kagame speaks volumes about what international leaders think of Rwanda. On Clinton’s board, Kagame sits with the brightest minds in the world and develops the best social networks. Kagame has practically redefined the way African leaders should engage the best of the Western world. African leaders like Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now Congo) made powerful friendships in Western capitals.
But they were largely for protecting Mobutu’s presidency rather than help his country resolve its economic conundrums. And it worked; Mobutu ruled Zaire for 32 years, building palaces as his citizens went hungry. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda seems to have learnt from Mobutu – first in organizing powerful western allies to protect his power, and second in building for himself a multi-million dollar palace. Nothing more! (Draws parallels) Kagame is building international networks for investment in Rwanda. His council of economic advisors shows he is seeking serious and influential advice.
On his council sits Joe Ritchie, a multi-million dollar commodities and options trader in Chicago who was named by BusinessWeek as one of the “sharpest minds in options business”; Michael Porter, a professor at the Harvard Business School, possibly the world’s leading authority on competitive strategy and international competitiveness; Michael J. Roux, the chairman of Roux International, Myinternet, Nexted and Australian Development Bank.
Roux is also Vice Chairman of Citigroup. Also on Kagame’s council of economic advisors is Ford Scott, president and CEO of Alcatel – one of the world’s leading telecommunications companies; Don Kaberuka, the president of the Africa Development Bank, and Clet Nayitegeka, a Rwandan American who is vice president of Glaxo Kline. Someone should read the list of Museveni’s (Who) presidential advisors on the economy to see how great a visionary our man can be.
The difference is that Kagame appoints people who can advise him; Museveni those he can lecture to.Last April, Fortune magazine ran a lead story titled “Why American CEOs Love Rwanda.” Starbucks CEO Jim Donalds was facing a riot from his board, who wanted to fire him. He invited Kagame to the board meeting. In a surprise move, Kagame delivered a corporate endorsement for Donalds when he told the board how the partnership between Rwanda and Starbucks was improving the incomes of poor farmers. The board kept Donald in his job.The strategic alliances between Rwanda/Kagame and some of the leading minds in business – and politics – around the globe are yielding incredible results.
Dubai World has just signed a US$ 230m investment deal in Rwanda. The government of Singapore has been hired to advise Rwanda on how to build a modern city that can serve as the region’s service centre. A Rwandan-Libyan consortium is building a US$ 300m ultra-modern conference centre complete with a five star hotel and an IT park in Kigali. It aims to turn Kigali into the regional IT hub. On The Frontier (OTF) is handling Rwanda’s competitive strategy. The story goes on and on.

BY NITAY ARTENSTEIN (I,ve summarized it)

Queen’s Internet Café, in the impoverished Kigali suburb of Nyamirambo, is teeming with children throughout most of the day. “Most of these kids are street children,” says the owner, Pacifique Bayongwa.”I feel bad about letting them in, since I know they must be paying me with money stolen from their parents. But at least they’re learning something useful”. Establishments like Queen’s are proliferating throughtout the Rwandan capital, and would seem to mark the beginning of an IT transformation for the Rwandan economy.

Paul Kagame has emphasized that his vision for the country is based on the development of IT as a poverty reduction tool through two main thrusts: i) improvement of the circulation of technical knowledge and thus increasing the productivity of agricultural sector, and , ii) for the long term, by creating employment in new , globally competitive IT enterprises. He’s confident that by 2020, Rwanda can be transformed into a knowledge based economy.

• Farmers in the rural areas are able to check on prices than fall prey to selfish middlemen.
• The Kenyan IT Policy (with the most developed infrastructure in the region) has computers imported duty free while computer parts are still taxable, Rwanda has all IT products imported tax removing an obstacle to a computer-assembling industry.
• Director of Rwandan IT Authority (RITA) Nkubito Bakuramutsa, recently left a position with Hewlett Packard to return to the country of his birth, is convinced that the change will be profound.He says once the education revolution is firmly underway all the rest will follow. To enable the population to make use of these technologies, Rwanda puts great emphasis on education. Enrolment for primary and secondary schools has increased to 2 million pupils, from a base of 940,000 at the beginning of the decade, and 40% of the secondary schools now have computer labs. Enrolment for higher education has increased tenfold since the pre-genocide level of 4,000, and is now at more than 40,000, after passing the 10,000 mark in 2000 and doubling again to 20,000 in 2002. While pre-genocide Rwanda had only one institute of higher learning-the Natiional University of Rwanda at Butare-it now has 20 such institutions. Many, such as the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), which is the main training ground for IT-related professionals, have been funded through UN and Donor money. Two-thirds of Rwanda’s higher education institutions are in private hands, thus easing the budgetary strain on the government.
• The premises of Telecom House, where RITA is based, have been planned as the future site of a national IT park which will gather, in one place, all of Rwanda’s IT players, both public and private.
• Best pastime for street kids in Rwanda is surfing the net.

One of the most significant IT projects in Rwanda is the deployment of a fibre optic cable system throughout the countryside in an effort to provide high-bandwidth internet access to impoverished farmers. The network will connect to Uganda and at a later stage to Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi. This system is set to kick off in around 2009, upon the completion of one of the two submarine fibre optic cables projects-known as the Eastern Africa Submarine System (TEAMS) and The Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy)-that will land in Mombasa and give East Africa direct access to the worldwide cable network. The cable once complete, will greatly reduce internet costs in the region- particularly in rural areas-where currently there’s exclusive reliance on expensive satellite communications to get a speedy connection.

campos :GOOD…WE have met once in SADC finals and we gave chipolopolo a soccer lesson 2-0…final score…and we never diappoint our President when it comes to serious issues-World Cup/CAN….Sorry for you Zambians ..you are playing with a team full of skills + partiotism

That 2-0 was some 11 years ago.You can imagine how much things have changed.Wait for saturday ZAMBIA 4 RWANDA 0