End of Kigali trip 2008

We have reached the end of our stay in Kigali for this year. We have had a great trip, with wonderful hosts and hostesses. I think I can write on behalf of all of us, Andy, Greg Eva and Paul. We hope we have behaved so we are welcome back.

I, Eva, want to thank everyone who help us fund this trip, and support this stay. Thank yous go especially to David Kreps at GSB, John Shoven SIEPR, Nick Hope SCID, and the staff at SCID and SIEPR in particular Deborah Cavalho. They never stopped beleiving in this project, even when the rest of us were in doubt, amazing.
On the Kigali side, thank you Krishna Govender, Andrew Nyamvumba, Andre Ndjery, David Kanamugire, and many more probably.

And extra and warm Thank you goes to Liz McBride who's enthusiams and knowledge made this idea to a real event. In very much danger working in Afganisthan has she kept in touch with the project, She has provided advice and generously shared with us her network in Rwanda and in the great lake region.

A very grateful thank you to Greg Rosston who not only assisted in making the trip possible but also ventured himslef to unknown territory. And finally, Andy Skrzypacz, (Andrzej), what a courageous and patiant man, who without hesitation said yes when I asked him to go, and with patiance waited for a program and a teaching schedule until the bitter end. I am so happy both Andy and Greg got to see both elephants and gorillas, what a treat.

Finally thank you to Paul, my husband, who really lives up to the vowes he once gave to me,.... in times of better and worse". Thank you for the trust and faith. What a treasure you are and what a contribution you made.

Zanzibar
27th of August, 2008

visits at Novotel and Ministries

Novotel : Rita director Amabassador to USA














At the Ministry of Education with Minister and her Planning Director














At the Ministry of Finance with Finance Minister and Special economic advisor

School pictures

Vice Rector with students at the School of Finance and Banking














with Paul too

Indian Kashana and the Ministry of Science and Technology

Indiana Kashana waitress and waiters






































At the Minister of Science and Technology

At the Ministry of Finance

At the Ministry of Finance













Molly from PSF and Jacky














Paul entertaining, easy sometimes


Jacky's beatiful hair do, admired by company

Lectures and Security

At Paul's lecture at RITA with engineers and the Minister for Science and Technology














The crowd of engineers














The Security is 100% outside the lecture hall

Picture from consulting with government agencies

At Novotel with Rita's director, and the Rwandan ambassador in the US


























Visiting the Minister of Education and her Planning Director













Visitng the Finance Minister with his special Advisor

Pictures of School of Finance and Banking

The School of Finance and Banking














The Rector Professor Krishna Govender












Library and 6 Shelves with books













Study Hall for 2000 plus students

10th night in Kigali and the last

Saturday 23 of August
Akagera national park in the north east of Rwanda is a small and very unexploited national park with wild animals, including lions, elephants, giraffes, hippopotamus, wild boar, impalas, baboons, zebras, buffalo, antelope, tiso, cobras, green mambas, ……… The lions, fortunately, are nocturnal, but we were unhappy to miss seeing any of the 150 elephants in the park.
We spent 12.5 ours in the car, and our poor but very skillful driver Morris drove in very difficult terrain. We asked him if he was hungry, he responded that he does not think about hunger, he just forget about it. We shared our breakfast.
The day came to a pleasant conclusion with dinner at the home of Andre and Mathilde. Andre's wonderful sister and belgian husband Pierre were there. She is directing the first lady's office and Pierre is working on a commission on HIV. More people dye in malaria than in HIV, probably because they may already have contracted HIV and hence there immune system is low and may easily contract malaria. In that state the malaria will take them before aids does. Mathilde's brother Gerhard was also there with wife. Gerard is the chief financial officer for Heineken in Rwanda. He was than one who initiated this whole project of Summer school in Rwanda. When I met him the first time I asked him what Rwanda needs the most, this was in 2005. He answered investment in human capital. Eva and Liz McBride then at IRC decided to do something about that. Mathilde and Andre have both worked although in different ways with the reconciliation in Rwanda. We had a long talk about the difficulties and paradoxes of unification, justice and reconciliation in the post-genocide era. Today for instance many Rwandans hare going to be compensated by the loss of possessions and property. The courts have to decide. The perpetrators have second thoughts, and ask themselves why did they not kill everyone instead in order to avoid the demand for compensation. Just a couple of days ago, there was a story in the newspaper about a survivor being killed in a norther city by his ex wife and neighbors. The idea was to silence in order to avoid that the survivor would talk.
There is still a long way to go…

9th night in Kigali

Friday 22 of August

We thought we could sleep in and have a late breakfast, but what we did not know is that the schedule had changed! We got a call to leave for the Ministry of Science and Technology before we could eat. No mercy!

The audience consisted mostly of engineers, so Paul decided to challenge them by lecturing about Market Design, covering prediction markets, matching (top-trading cycles), and spectrum auctions. The lecture was extraordinarily well received. The Minister, with a doctorate in mathematical physics, was particularly active. There was a break to interview Paul for Rwandan television.

Eva went back to the School to say goodbye to the Rector, and the vice rector. Krishna Govender the rector took me around the school and showed me the facilities. The 2000 plus student have a library, and a study hall and an IT unit. But all very small. (see pictures)

6 out of 60 teachers have a PhD degree. This fall the school admitted 500 new students in addition to students for the MBA part-time program.

For lunch we went to Novotel again and had lunch with the RITA (Rwandan Information Technology Administration) people, Nkubito Manzi Bakuramutsa, executive director, and Patrick Nyirishema, deputy executive director. Nkubito was educated in NY (his parents had studied at the Sorbonne Paris) and worked at H&P for eleven years before he came to Rwanda.

While walking in we were introduced to the Rwandan Ambassador to the United States, James Kimonyo and his sister. (see Picture). He mentioned that he was working on a program to place top students from Rwanda at top universities in the US.

The afternoon was packed with administration of the vignette study, and meetings with the Minister of Finance and Education.

At the Ministry of Education we met with the minister, Dr Daphrose Gahakwa, a Rwandan women and a professor from Uganda in agriculture. She had just taken over the ministry and had been the Minister of Agriculture before. The director of planning and Policy and Capacity Building was also there. I told her my experience, and she raised her eyebrow when I spoke about the School of Finance and Banking.

Eva asked why the school with so limited resource had to admit so many students, why not just settle for 50 or so, in particular given the labor market. She said the government had a plan to go from 40,000 students in higher education to a million within some years. Eva also asked her who decides about the number of students. She said that the school was paid per student. We pointed out to her that that kind of scheme may not benefit quality but only quantity in education.

We talked some more about the potential problems associated with this goal and I promised her Eva would get back to her to see what we at Stanford could do. She will.

The meeting at the finance ministry was mostly for Paul and he and the finance minister James Musoni had a straightforward discussion about the problems with illiquid capital markets. Eva said something about the issues that had been ventilated with the Minister of Education. At the meeting Jean Francois and James Tumwine personal assistant to the Minister also participated.

Arriving at the hotel around 6PM, the director of the newly started policy institute the Institute of Policy Analysis and Research Rwanda Antonia Mutoro was waiting for Eva in the lobby. We had tried to set up a meeting between her and Greg since Greg is the deputy director of SIEPR and could have given some good advice to a new although temporary director of the institute. She is interviewed for the job on a permanent basis on Monday. Eva did not have much to say except urging her to get in touch when she knows if she will be the future director. She is finishing her PhD in quality control at the University of Glasgow right now.

Finally at 6.45 Eva met with Jean Francois, the chief economic adviser to the Minister of finance, to talk about viable solutions that Stanford could contribute to further the quality of education of Rwandan students.

Friday evening was supposed to be a rap up meeting with everyone involved in our stay, Molly, Andrew, David, Nkubito, Antonia, and the minister of science and technology. But in the end we were a small group with David, Andrew, Andre and Paul and me who tried to summarize from the weeks with the Stanford visitors and look forward. Eva promised to get back to people in Rwanda about what Andre and Greg would want to do to as well has about Paul’s and my different projects.

8th night in Kigali

Thursday 21 of August

Eva teaches her last classes on global organization, but is feeling a bit low energy because of a bug she caught the night before. I talk about motivation theories and pay for performance.

The morning class is a third-year full-time class with students who are active and interested, around 20 of them are there. There nice and friendly professor Dr Ibrahim who received both his education and wife in Indonesia sits in the back of the class listening.

I ask the class what they think about performance contract: would they want to have a performance pay or a fixed salary?

Few of them want a performance contract; most say a fixed salary. They want security and government jobs provide a steady and safe outcome. Whereas private employers do not always pay, they say. They all claim, however, that wealth confers status in Rwanda. Finally I asked them what chances were that they would get a job at all after graduation. Most of them said 50/50 some even claimed that there was only a 30% chance. Starting your own company is tough, too, there is very little infrastructure to support entrepreneurial activities, unlike Silicon Valley. In the evening, the wonderful part time class of Human Resource students came in force, with Professor Ibrahim thanking participating in the discussion this last session. I asked this group who actually decides in the household, who has control: the women, the man or both? Everyone had their view. Finally the older and as Professor Ibrahim explained the more responsible of them all said that the control in the household was more complicated. He explained and I interpreted what I thought he meant by referring to the Greek saying that the man is the head but the woman is the neck: she can turn that head any way she wants. Everyone agreed.

I asked them what they have been taught about motivation, one student said, not much but they know about Maslow’s hierarchy!

The same morning, Paul lectured at the Private Sector Federation (PSF) about IPOs – a subject of particular interest to them – and market design. The recent oversubscribed IPO of Safaricom had the members interested in how IPOs work and whether IPO auctions are a good idea.

Eva and Paul had lunch at the Flamingo again, this time joined by two PSF staff: director Emmanuel Hategeke and Molly Rwigamba, director of capacity building and employment. Also at the table was Dr. Taranza Ganziro, the founder/owner of a printing company and an investment firm, and his very lovely public relations assistant Jacky.

We talked about Jacky’s hair, which she has done in Kigali every 2 month. (see picture). The hair styles of the Rwandan women are very interesting and vary a lot. I have not yet figured out if the different styles signified a particular identification, but I suspect that it does.

In the afternoon Eva gave a talk at the PSF. The audience was a 20 some group of bureaucrats/managers from the organization. We spoke about the lack of skill graduates coming out of the school system in Rwanda, and the difficulty of the labor market to allocate jobs to the graduates. And how potentially difficult that may be for the Rwandan society to deal with, a bunch of ambitious, aspiring educated and frustrated unemployed young women and men.

We also spoke about motivation and how difficult it is to make employees work hard. I said that firing or threatening to fire people that do not work hard usually is an effective instrument, and in particular in governments sectors where continuous performance contracts are rare. Finally we talked about the entrepreneurial climate. I asked: Is a climate of experimentation and questioning/challenging ideas and thoughts common in Rwanda? The answer was: no, one does not challenge people’s opinions or views in public. Although the Rwandans think freely, they may often keep their views to themselves. Someone joked: “the truth will set you free.”

Thursday night Paul and I went to India Kashana for dinner again.

Andre, Andrew and two others men were sitting chatting along through the evening. At Another big table a birthday was celebrated. The room was all of a sudden darkened and the waiters dressed in red uniforms, see picture, came out and sang happy birthday songs in different languages. That is what is so nice with Kigali, it is a small place and you are almost always likely to run in to people you know, even as foreigners.

More Pictures from the School of Finance and Banking
Professor Krishna Govender the rector of the school
From south Africa, and payed by the Michigan University.
Library with six shelves
Study Hall

Lecture hall taking 400 plus students
Teachers chatting about the postponing of the test, Monday 18th of August

Eva in conversation with students at the School of Finance and Banking

5th night in Kigali Monday the 18th of August

Monday morning, On the Agenda: School for Finance and Banking in Kigali and Ministry of Finance.

Eva began teaching yesterday. Her first class was scheduled in the morning in a large lecture hall for 438 undergraduate business students. Unfortunately, the students came to class expecting an exam. The student representative had to break the news that there would be a guest lecture instead, with the exam postponed for a week. Students were understandably furious. Half or more walked out. The instructor failed even to introduce Eva by name. Paul came in a bit later to observe and missed the initial events. What he saw was a typical undergraduate group, with most of those sitting near the front focused on what was being said while most of those sitting further back could be found reading a book or chatting with a friend or wearing iPod ear buds (and presumably listening to music).

The language skills varied a lot. Few could have a conversation; most did not understand what the questions were that I posed or what we were talking about. However 50% of the students were present and interested. When Eva showed them the picture of Stanford University they all jumped and 280 of them gave her all their attention. Stanford, California! Wow! Afterward 50 students gathered around the teacher and wanted to chat about this and that and about Stanford University. These guys are hungry and eager to get ahead.

At lunch, we met Andre and his wife Mathilde, Andrew and David at Novotel, where expats and ministry and NGO people commonly meet. We were trying to get a program for Paul. Getting a program in Rwanda, it seems, happens when you are in the country and not before. And plans are constantly changed and revised up to the very last minute. Someone from the Blair consulting group revamping government work claimed that this could be explained by people’s lack of vision and inability to set their won priorities. When a superior – particularly a minister – says that something should be done, subordinates put everything else on hold to do it immediately.

In the afternoon, we visited the head of the MBA program, Mr. Satya Murty, an Indian from Southern India and a professor of management, in his office. While there, the head of the marketing department, a woman who had an MBA degree from UC San Diego popped by to talk to us. She recounted the challenges of teaching classes and grading with 400+ students, the resistance of students to unscheduled extra activities, and the difficult of teaching students to think for themselves when their early schooling was based on rote memorization. She explained how a poorly planned guest lecture program could disrupt an already overburdened system.

In the afternoon, Monday, we were taken to the chief economic advisor at the Ministry of finance, Dr Jean Francois Ruhashyankiko both a Belgian and Rwandan citizen. He has a PhD from Harvard and had Elhanan Helpman as one of his advisors. He told us about the economy, that 57% of the people lived in poverty and 37% in extreme poverty (less than 1800 calories per day). The national budget is 600 billion RFR, or about US$1.2 billion. The revenues come about 50 % from taxes and another 50% from outside donors. The main taxes are VAT, PAYE (personal income tax) and a small corporate tax. Trade taxes are relatively high, Jean Francois admitted, largely because they are easiest to collect, but these will become lower due to the emergence of the East African Market.

Rwanda has a nearly balanced budget, unlike Kenya and Uganda. Rwanda has just opened their stock market. They hope that companies might cross list their companies. Paul asked, where the capital come from. It seems there is much more cash coming into Rwanda than official figures show. It is thought to come in the form of cash brought on flights into the country and to be present even in poor areas of the country. Savers are believed to horde their capital because there is no good mediator to match capital owners with projects. With a new government sponsored equity capital type of set up, they hope investors will be more willing to invest in entrepreneurial projects. (In a follow-up discussion, Paul expressed skepticism, emphasizing the role of scale in auctions and exchanges and suggesting that a Rwandan market would be far too small to thrive.)

The growth rate of Rwanda forecast for this year is around 8.5%, due in large part to non-repeatable agricultural improvements. Jean Francois also told us that in contrast to many other developing countries, Rwanda has been hit less hard by the fuel and food price hike. They are exporting tea and coffee among other products and have benefitted from the increase in international agricultural products.

Later on that afternoon Eva went off teaching her evening classes around 5.30. This group was the part-time evening group. I asked how many of them worked during the day. Very few did and many of the women were home taking care of children and household. Did they think they would get a job after graduation? Few thought so. Where would they prefer to work, in the private sector or in the government? Many said they wanted a secure salary and since working in the small private sector meant fluctuations in salary, they were going for security rather than possible wealth, although they agreed that wealth does generate status in Rwanda.

These students as well as the morning students filled in the Distributive Justice Vignette study the last 30 minutes of class. It was easier to explain to these students how to fill it out than to the morning students. In the back of the class the head of the HR department sat and listened.

8PM we were taken out by David, Andrew, and Andre to Flamingo – their favorite Chinese restaurant. But after a very long trip on very bumpy roads we found out that the restaurant was closed. So we went to a Greek restaurant that also was closed because by then it was already 9ish. Finally we had our dinner at a french/thai/african place run by French speaking patron around 10.30. We fell into our beds and slept like clubbed seals.

One thing is clear, we are hosted by a very nice, energetic group of young intelligent people although mostly men for some reason!

Monday was over.