Good Practices and Innovations in Public Governance 2003-2011

Good Practices and InnovATIONS in Public Governance
• How could citizen trust amongst each other be increased to start the difficult
process of healing and working together and building greater social capital and
inclusion amongst different social groups? How could the preferences and needs
of specific excluded groups be highlighted and acted upon by an active citizenry?
• How could national policy making be influenced and informed by better, rigorous
information and statistics generated by citizens themselves, so as to improve
resource allocation and the accountability of government and donors in
meeting the millennium development goals in Rwanda? It is these three core
challenges that the Ubudehe initiative sought to address.
The Solution
The Ubudehe initiative emerged thanks to the vision and active engagement of several
key actors. During its inception, core drivers included innovators from the Rwandan Government,
in particular Mr. Protais Musoni, the then Secretary General at the Ministry of
Local Government (and currently the Minister of Local Government in the Government
of Rwanda, the main driving force behind Ubudehe), Mr. Vincent Karega, then Director
at the Strategic Planning Unit, Ministry of Finance, the social development advisor to
DFID Rwanda, and the head of the EU delegation to Rwanda. Mr. Sam Joseph, coach and
consultant from India, also played an important role in conceptualizing Ubudehe.
The initial ideas, theories, and vision to create a process that increases citizen’s ability
to self-govern and become proactive in shaping the design of their poverty reduction
strategies emerged during the period 1999-2001. At the same time, the Poverty
Reduction Strategy Program (PRSP) process requirement for a Participatory Poverty
Assessment (PPA) was also in place.
The idea of Ubudehe was conceived as an opportunity to demonstrate the power of
citizen participation in its truest form. In order to accomplish this goal, the Ministry of
Local Government, together with other government entities and relevant stakeholders
decided to rely on and to expand a form of traditional mutual assistance, called Ubudehe,
which oper ated at the lowest administrative unit, the Cell or village. The revamped
institution was to bring together all members of the community to assess their
socio-economic conditions, define their priorities and decide on what to do in order to
improve their well being. For example, they could decide, based on a limited budget,
whether they preferred to build a school or a health care centre in their village. “When
we were looking for a development approach to fight poverty and enhance people’s
livelihoods from the grassroots, Ubudehe came into the picture. The fact is that it
emanates from our culture and is people-centred, so we prioritised it and it has paid
off,”said Eugene Barikana, the Secretary General of the Ministry of Local Government
(MINALOC). “The uniqueness of this programme that saw it outclass competitors
from other countries was its nature of being people-centred, right from the grass-
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