James Musoni: Local Government Minister
The nationwide exercise of evaluating Imihigo at the district level has kicked-off .It will take three days.
According to the Ministry of Local government which oversees the exercise, the national evaluation team is composed of senior officials and experts from different institutions, both public and private, as well as the civil society.
This aims at promoting transparency and accountability. The above three sectors –public, private, civil society- are all stakeholders in districts joint action development forum, whose objective is to expedite national development through concerted efforts.
Evaluators are picked from the Office of The President, Prime Minister’s Office, Ministry of Local Government, sector Ministries and Government Agencies, Rwanda Civil Society Platform, Private Sector Federation and Rwanda Association for Local Government Authorities (RALGA).
The Ministry says that four teams have been constituted, each with 12-13 members selected from all participating institutions.
Each team will evaluate seven to eight districts. Every district and the City of Kigali will be evaluated during two consecutive days.
In order to share and to have common understanding of the whole exercise, the whole evaluation team will start with Rulindo District this Tuesday and Wednesday in a public session.
“There is need to maintain bold imihigo evaluation guiding principles that include among others; team spirit; technical expertise to see tangible results; strong commitment and evaluate as you train districts personnel”, said the Minister of Local Government James Musoni while briefing the National Imihigo evaluation team on Monday.
Imihigo was re-introduced in local government in 2006 at the beginning of the second phase of decentralization, as a performance based management tool, aiming at expediting national development goals.
According to Musoni, Imihigo evaluation is of paramount importance because it assesses implementation progress of commitments districts signed with the President of the Republic.
It also promotes the spirit of competitiveness; identifying challenges that impede implementation of imihigo; identifying solutions for fast-tracking implementation; identifying best practices and advise for scaling up to other districts and all this helps to expedite national development.