President Kagame enlightens inquisitive minds on the essence of Umuganda in Rwanda
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00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:02 In studying Rwanda-- and you mentioned it in the program--
00:06 is the day of service, the Umuganda.
00:09 Is that how to say it?
00:11 And if you could just explain a little bit about that,
00:14 because I think it's such a beautiful story of how
00:21 your country came together in its transformation
00:25 and how that has been instituted and affected
00:30 the spirit of the country.
00:32 And also, do you participate?
00:35 Well, first of all, our philosophy,
00:39 the way we try to do things in Rwanda
00:43 is to enable our citizens to do what they can for themselves,
00:53 to uplift themselves, leave poverty behind us,
00:59 conflicts, insecurity.
01:02 But this comes from making sure we do for ourselves
01:08 and working with others the best we can to move forward.
01:14 And it's not anymore for us a question of survival.
01:21 We're not trying to survive.
01:22 We are trying to live.
01:24 And living has standards.
01:29 We want to live a good life.
01:32 We want every citizen to enjoy that.
01:34 And here, there are many things we
01:39 can do for ourselves that we have within us,
01:46 or that is required to be able to achieve that.
01:50 There are other things we need partners
01:54 who want to work with other people.
01:56 There are lots of resources, a lot of things
02:01 they can bring to this process for us to be able to advance.
02:07 Now, talking about some of the things we can do for ourselves,
02:12 I remember when this process of Muganda was starting,
02:16 we were asking that there are things we may not
02:21 do by ourselves, and we need support,
02:25 we need donors, and so on.
02:28 But we asked ourselves whether we needed donors to help
02:33 with keeping our homesteads, our cities,
02:40 different places clean.
02:43 Even from that standpoint of environment,
02:47 having a clean environment, it's not
02:51 going to take a lot of resources to begin with.
02:54 It takes the will of people to try and do for themselves.
02:58 For example, when we burned plastic bags so
03:04 that our environment is not polluted with these plastic
03:08 bags, it just took a decision to burn them.
03:14 But at the same time around that,
03:16 having a conversation of introducing the alternatives
03:24 to plastic bags became an industry, a business in itself.
03:29 But we are getting rid of these pollutants in our environment.
03:37 But it just takes a decision.
03:39 Doesn't require additional dollar to getting it done.
03:47 So cleaning the environment and then bringing people together
03:51 to understand that it actually is good for all of us,
03:54 and therefore we can start by doing it ourselves.
03:59 You can see you achieve another thing, the change of mentality
04:07 that certain things we can do and they
04:10 will be helpful adding to what else we are trying to do,
04:14 even if we have to wait for support.
04:17 But we need to get started.
04:20 This is really how Umuganda started.
04:23 Yes, all of us, when we are available.
04:27 It's every month, every Saturday that ends the month.
04:32 And we've done it now for close, I think,
04:35 must be 14 years now.
04:39 And it has a self-drive.
04:43 People are motivated to do it.
04:45 You don't need to push anybody.
04:47 And everybody turns up and we all-- after cleaning,
04:55 we have a discussion about what is the communities may
05:01 be interested in in different parts of our country.
05:04 And we start like 7 in the morning.
05:07 We end it at 10.
05:08 And then we have another extra hour
05:11 to talk about the different community challenges
05:15 and how we can have them addressed.
05:17 And we have found a huge boost in the developments
05:21 in our country around that.
05:23 And it brings the communities together.
05:25 Absolutely, it unifies, brings together the country
05:29 in a very fundamental way.
05:32 [Music]
05:34 [BLANK_AUDIO]