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This year marks the 28th anniversary of the Liberation – Kwibohora28, an important milestone in Rwanda’s history.
In the aftermath of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and the Liberation war, Rwandans made three important choices: we chose to stay together, to be accountable and to think big. These decisions have been at the core of the country’s ongoing renewal.
Under the theme “Together We Prosper” Kwibohora28 is another opportunity to celebrate a peaceful, united and prosperous nation.
As we celebrate our liberation, we reflect on the continuous and successful contribution made by men and women in uniform, not only for the peace and security we enjoy today, but also for their involvement in the socio-economic development of Rwanda.
Every year Rwanda Defense Force in partnership with government institutions is involved in a number of socio-economic development projects across the country
Role in Socio-Economic Development
As with any other army, the primary responsibility of the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) is to defend the territorial integrity of Rwanda and to safeguard its national sovereignty.
However, the constitution of the Republic of Rwanda assigns RDF a secondary role, to support the development aspirations of the country and actively to participate in ensuring human security and Rwanda’s socio-economic development.
Underlying the assignment of RDF, this secondary role is the idea that the Force’s primary constitutional mandate of defending the country’s territorial integrity and safeguarding its sovereignty would become much more challenging in a context of widespread poverty and deprivation.
Poverty that stems from lack of opportunities for self-fulfillment is a major driver of recruitment of especially young men into insurgents and other violent or criminal groups.
It is against this background that since 2009 RDF has been formally involved in a wide range of activities in support of the government’s socio-economic development efforts through the RDF Citizen Outreach Program (COP).
Its activities straddle two categories. Some are income-generating and job-creating and form part of Rwanda’s private sector landscape. Others are part of its much-acclaimed COP activities designed as direct responses to challenges faced by ordinary citizens.
Today, using its in-house engineers, RDF builds and repairs major roads and bridges. In this way it has made a great contribution for growing the stock of Rwanda’s well maintained urban and rural roads, as well as the number of bridges across the country. This has in turn eased movement in parts of the country where such infrastructure was non-existent or in need of rehabilitation.
Other RDF interventions have included engagement in house and school’s construction and RDF remains at the forefront of building schools, health facilities and housing for genocide survivors and for ordinary citizens who are unable to meet their own housing needs because of affordability and in need of low-cost housing.
In the last 28 years RDF has so far constructed 88,873 houses for the vulnerable/ Genocide survivors, 86 Model Villages, 284,318km of roads including paved and unpaved roads, 465 bridges, distributed clean water to 80,533 families and electricity to 294,077 families; while other housing projects (hospitals, health centres, schools, etc.) have also been performed.
Agriculture and Environmental Protection
Other domains in which RDF has made a significant contribution is in the agricultural sector.
Soldiers work alongside ordinary citizens to protect the environment by planting trees, building terraces on elevated land to prevent soil erosion and building defenses against flooding which have all been carried out on 84,617 Ha.
In addition, they are actively involved in environmental protection through; wetland management and development of irrigation facilities. In some coffee growing areas RDF has built coffee washing facilities to enable farmers clean their coffee and dry it in enhanced sanitary conditions, thereby raising its marketable value.
RDF is also at the forefront of developing pesticides and animal drugs.
Health
RDF operates one of Rwanda’s largest and best equipped referral hospitals, Rwanda Military Hospital (RMH). Of the hospital’s total patients treated, 80 per cent are civilians.
They come seeking healthcare ranging from the treatment of simple ailments to highly complicated conditions including cancer, for which the hospital has a highly developed oncology unit.
As part of its medical outreach activities, RDF conducts several annual clinics in communities, taking health services to where people live. Many people in local communities do not pro-actively seek healthcare they need from medical facilities. As a result, they develop chronic conditions. The RDF’s outreach activities are able to attend to such cases. In total 579,771 patients have been treated in this category.
Due to the outbreak of Corona Virus 19 (Covid -19) Pandemic, COP activities were not carried out as usual but RDF supported the government institutions in putting up isolation and treatment facilities to help in the fight against outbreak.
Other COP activities include construction and renovation of health facilities by the Reserve Force under contract with the Ministry of Health.
The liberation is a process and a long journey. Before 4th July 1994, the focus was on the armed struggle but now we have embarked on the struggle to stabilize our country, to restore our dignity and to take it to greater heights both socially and economically.
Happy Liberation Day!
Credit: The New Times
