Rwanda Governance Board released findings of one its main and most anticipated publications, Rwanda Governance Scorecard on October 31st, 2019 during an event held at the Kigali Serena Hotel. Rwanda Governance Scorecard (RGS) is a home grown tool that gauges the state of Governance in Rwanda since 2010. It is “nationalized self assessment tool” according to Dr. Usta Kaitesi.

 RGS measures eight pillars; namely: (1) Rule of Law, (2) Political Rights and Civil Liberties, (3) Participation and Inclusiveness, (4)Safety and Security, (5)Investing in Human and Social Development, (6)Control of Corruption, Transparency and Accountability, (7)Quality of Service Delivery and (8)Economic and Corporate Governance.  

The latest launch marked the 6th Edition of the Rwanda Governance Scorecard, and each edition is compared to previous one (s) to inform state actors and non state actors about the situation in various aspects of the country’s life.   RGS derives from a combination and diversity of sources to show Rwanda's performance against set projections and goals thus providing evidence based evaluation of successes of the country's efforts, existing challenges and possible remedies.

In the descriptive term used by Stephen Rodriques, UNDP Resident Representative to Rwanda while appearing on panel during the launch, RGS “provides quite a comprehensive set of data on where the country is and where it needs to go” 

 Through a mix of findings from international indices on Rwanda, national surveys and perception, RGS paints a real and true picture of Rwanda moving in the right direction but with areas that need attention for the country to keep following the compass pointing to “the Rwanda we want”.  

From the pioneer RGS in 2010 up to the 6^th Edition,   security and safety has remained the leading pillar in terms of score; its lowest score was 87.26% in 2010, and the highest was 94.97% scored in RGS 5^th Edition while the 6^th Edition presented a slight change to 94.29%.  According to RGS the good performance of the pillar is attributed to the fact that security is a “prerequisite to Rwanda’s transformation” and then there is “synergy between leadership, citizens and security organs in ensuring security in the country” 

Political Rights and Civil Liberties with a score of 85.17%, Rule of Law with 84.71% and Control of Corruption, Transparency and Accountability with 84.28% are other pillars that performed well in RGS 6^th edition.   

 Since its launch RGS has been a contributor to the formulation of various policies, EDPRS One, EDPRS Two and most recently the National Strategy for Transformation and Vision 2050. It has served as a trigger for policy actions and strategies to put back on track pillars with low performance vis a vis set targets and goals.  This has been seen for example in efforts invested in improving the Quality of service delivery a pillar whose performance has lagged behind over the years except in RGS 6^th Edition where it overtook  Investing in Human and Social Development by 2.02%. The latter dropped on the last position after registering the highest downward trend from 75.55% in RGS 5^the Edition to 68.52% in RGS 6^th Edition. 

RGS called for improved infrastructure, school feeding program, elimination of dropout and eradication of child stunting which affected the performance of this pillar. 

The pillars of Participation and Inclusiveness that scored 73% as well as the pillar of Economic and Corporate Governance that scored 76.43% also registered performance indicating they present areas that should be given more attention. 

RGS reflects the choice of Rwanda in terms of Governance which is seen in what the Dr. Emmanuel Nibishaka the Deputy CEO of Rwanda Governance Board described as “citizen centre governance, accountability and inclusiveness, consensus and dialogue” 

Finally as Mr. Osten CHULU SDGs, expert at APRM rightly puts it “the Rwandan approach towards self assessment is a model that we need to replicate across the continent”