The Export and Entrepreneurship Department within the Rwanda Development Board has begun implementing a decision by the last government retreat to offer a comprehensive program of targeted business development services to the small and medium enterprises.

The decision came after President Kagame’s keynote speech at a symposium organized by the City of London Corporation (CLC) with the theme “Challenges of improving investment climate in Africa,” where cooperation was established between the City of London and the government of Rwanda that would see the former assists SMEs in entrepreneurship development aspects.

However, the assistance is offered within the East African Community initiative where Tanzania and Rwanda were singled out by London as best performers when it comes to business climate.

According to Tony Nsanganira, the head of EED at RDB, the 100 SME’s selected for the numerous training sessions were chosen based on their potential and current stage of development, the level of investment, number of employees and their annual turnover.

“The current training will specifically give SME’s knowledge on basic book keeping and accounting, in a hands-on approach s that we feel will help them improve on the way they run their businesses,” Nsanganira said.

The current training has attracted 104 participants from 50 enterprises, even though 100 were expected. “We don’t know why they haven’t turned up but we will do a follow-up to find out,” Nsanganira said.

The program, which runs for eight months, might be extended once positive results are achieved. “If the initiative is well received, it could become an ongoing program providing these services every year to 100 qualified companies,” Nsanganira added.

The initiative will see seven experts come to Rwanda to conduct training with the SMEs especially in management skills. “We are looking forward to issuing the trainees with software that would help them in their work and also provide some reading material,” Nsanganira said.

High growth potential

On top of that, RDB is looking at ways of expanding the program to include customer care which is currently the focal point to improve service delivery in the country.

However, Nsanganira pointed out that the 100 SMEs invited had been observed to have a high growth potential, and are formally registered with RDB. “We had to make hard decisions while selecting the companies, especially considering that Rwanda has more than 70,000 SMEs which all require capacity building,” Nsanganira said, adding that it was part of RDB’s responsibility to sensitize people in the informal sector to formalize their business as that is the only way they could access such training.

DDE will design a follow up mechanism which is aimed at ensuring that the training is also put into practice. “We will conduct field visits and hold discussions with the SMEs to encourage them to put into use what they’ve learnt,” said Ortrud Birk, the technical advisor at EED.

She pointed out that trainees were to fill in evaluation forms after the training which would help to assess the short-term impact of the training.

“We have to ensure that what they learn is practically relevant to their day-to-day business,” Ortrud Birk said.

According to Fred Muhire, a trainee that works for Umutara Dairy Marketing Corporation (UDAMACO), the training is relevant as it mainly touches on aspects he deals with in his daily business.   

“Over the past three days we’ve learnt accounting systems which included basic book keeping, financial analysis and fund management, among others, and this is very relevant since I am the accountant,” Muhire pointed out.

He advised fellow employees in the SMEs to join the training as it would give them knowledge to better understand what they deal with at work and hence ensure that the companies they work for increases profits.

“I believe we will change a lot of things at our places of work with the help of this training, so I call upon other SME staff to attend such training as they are useful,” Muhire said.

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