Kigali, 6th September, 2016-Rwanda Governance Board (RGB) officially launched the study “Development through Good Governance - Foresighting of Service Delivery in Secondary Cities”, 

The study was officially launched by the Minister of Infrastructure James MUSONI at Kigali Serena Hotel in the presence of other stakeholders.

This project is aimed at challenging conventional thinking and promoting creativity and innovation in governance. It was conducted in six selected secondary cities namely: Huye, Muhanga, Musanze, Nyagatare, Rubavu and Rusizi.

The Foresighting of Service Delivery in Secondary Cities Report was jointly produced by RGB and the Future-Moves Group (FMG), a renowned Strategic Management Consultancy firm from Singapore.

The study is meant to shed light on governance and service delivery essential needs for Secondary Cities to make a greater development impact in Rwanda.

In his remarks, Minister James Musoni emphasized that, economic development alone is not sufficient, we need Governance to sustain our development program, and we need Governance as a key ingredient and as a soft infrastructure needed to galvanize our hard infrastructure. “Minister added.

Minister Musoni is confident that the study that tries to bring to us a pool of different case studies from the world class cities to learn from is indeed part of Rwanda’s development agenda. “We want to be compared with the best and make the best choices for our people. As reminded by His Excellency the President Paul Kagame during our 12^th National Leadership Retreat.

 I quote:“The nation of Rwanda should be comparing itself with the best. If you want to compare, compare with those who have achieved what we are struggling to achieve. Comparing to the worst just to feel good about us does not make sense.”

In line with the EDPRS II, Rwanda has adopted the development of secondary cities as a strategy to promote the quality of life for all Rwandans towards the vision 2020 target to become a middle income economy.

This requires key strategic investment at the level of Secondary cities’ interventions in order for them to play a big role in driving Rwanda’s development agenda.

The concept of strategic foresight has been introduced to District leadership (decision making organs, business leaders, local development actors and opinion leaders, professional groups, etc.); with the purpose of engaging them to the foresight approach and collects their aspirations towards achieving desired governance goals, with particular focus on urbanization development.

The findings and recommendations of this study will help to ensure that all stakeholders have thorough knowledge regarding cities profiles in order to work together to achieve strategic goals set to accelerate Secondary cities development.