Multidirectional Learning in international development
A conversation with Ambassador Christine Nkulikiyinka, CEO of the Rwanda Cooperation Initiative
In 2023, GIZ’s Knowledge and Learning Team invites different experts to explore issues of Knowledge, Power and Diversity in the field of development cooperation. This is a summary transcript of our session on “Multidirectional learning in international development” with Ambassador Christine Nkulikiyinka, CEO of the Rwanda Cooperation Initiative.
What is the Rwanda Cooperation Initiative (RCI):
The institution was created in 2018. Rwanda had experienced rapid economic development in 25 years, and that attracted a lot of interest and visitors. Meetings with government officials place. They would organise the visits and detach someone to ensure hospitality and coordinate the programme for the delegations. With the growing number of visitors, this became too much of a burden to the institutions, and there was no follow-up afterward. That is the reason why the Rwanda Cooperation Initiative was created. It aims at promoting knowledge exchange and experience sharing in the context of South-South Cooperation. Whenever a country wants to learn from our experience or wants to benchmark, they visit us.
There are 2 kinds of services offered by the Rwanda Cooperation:
1. Study visits and trainings: Country representatives visit us for one week to benchmark on or learn about a specific topic.
1. Advisory services and project implementation: Beyond individual study visits, we provide technical assistance. For example — when country representatives want to update their strategies and policies, or put in place specific solutions, RCI sends experts to support the implementation of projects.
To date, we have received more than 400 delegations, coming from more than 42 countries. Mainly from Africa, but also beyond: Jamaica, Timor Leste, Pakistan, and Yemen for example. Currently, we are working on a project with Jamaica. The areas of interest for delegations that come here are very diverse: Digitalisation, Gender, Good Governance, Business Environment, Health, and Education to name a few. The topics covered are very diverse: health, start-up ecosystem, statistics, agriculture, gender, etc. We work with all kinds of institutions, covering different topics.
Rwanda Cooperation is a state-owned enterprise. The government pays the salaries, but operations are financed through the activities via a cost-recovering mechanism. As for project implementation, we charge countries for the services we provide.
Homegrown solutions for new situations, contexts, and issues.
Homegrown solutions are rooted in our culture and history, and at times were lost due to colonialism but brought back as we were rebuilding our country after the tragic genocide against the Tutsi. These development initiatives were then adapted to the new situation, the new contexts, and issues we were facing. We have listed 9 home-grown solutions that were instrumental in developing our country in the last decades.
One Example is the Gacaca Court. After the Genocide we had around 150 000 people in prisons, accused of having participated in the genocide. Everything had been destroyed during the genocide and there was no functioning justice system. Experts told us that it would have taken more than 100 years to judge all these people in prison under these circumstances. The focus was to rebuild the Rwandan nation. This is where Gacaca came in. It is an old way of resolving conflicts in communities. Gacaca refers to grass because people were literally sitting on the ground, discussing conflicts at the community level. It was less about punishing but about finding ways to rebuild peace in communities. We adapted it to the Rwandan context after the genocide. In 10 years from 2002 to 2012, Rwanda handled almost 2 million cases of genocide-related crimes. It was less about punishing, but more about providing restorative justice. The whole community would sit together and discuss the case. It was about bringing people together, giving survivors the opportunity to ask questions and ask where their relatives were so that they might bury them in dignity. It was a method of bringing justice that would help to grief and bring a kind of decent closure. This kind of jurisdiction was rooted in our tradition. That’s why it has a Rwandan name, like all our homegrown solutions.
Benchmarking and exchanging on good practice
The other category is what we call good practices: these are initiatives, policies, projects, and strategies that we have identified in other countries and adapted to the Rwandan context. This is very important. Every country is different, and while we have similarities with our brothers and sisters from other African countries, we also have our specificities that we must take into account.
Learning has many directions
Rwanda Cooperation is about sharing knowledge and experiences. About helping others avoid repeating the mistakes we have made. At the same time, we also learn from the countries we work with. It is learning in all directions. We are a young institution, only five years old, but still learn every day how to improve our services. We have had some visits from “Global North, as they want to understand Rwanda’s development journey over the past 25 years, but we work primarily with countries from the “Global South”, in the framework of South-South Cooperation.
I remember that in 2008, when I was Rwandan Ambassador to Germany, telling people that we had banned plastic bags in Rwanda. Germans were surprised and asked why they don’t learn from our experience. I answered that they must ask themselves. It is up to you to be ready to learn from us. We are more than ready to share our knowledge. The concept of home-grown initiatives is very important in this context. We believe that every country has lots of ancient, very valuable practices that can be built on. We always portray Africa as being poor and rural, but we want to show a new face of Africa. We want to break with preconceived ideas and misconceptions about development in Africa.
Triangular Cooperation and its benefits
One other mode of multidirectional learning is the format of Triangular Cooperation. As Ulrich Müller, GIZ lead on Triangular Cooperation explained: Triangular Cooperation does not refer to three countries that engage in shared learning and action, but three roles: (1) beneficiary, (2) pivotal partner with specialised knowledge and (3) facilitating partner. These roles can shift, meaning, that Germany does not necessarily have to be the facilitating partner or the one conveying specialised knowledge, but can be a learning partner. When engaging in this form of cooperation, partners are surprised, where the knowledge actually lies. And that kind of surprise is fantastic. For triangular cooperation to work well, it is good to explore cooperation with ministries and institutions outside of development cooperation, as they often have a clearer picture about their learning needs. In triangular cooperation, Germany typically covers only the costs of its contribution, the rest is covered by the other participating countries. You notice that when partner countries bring that commitment, it fosters ownership and involvement.
Promising steps: We need to start learning from the Global South.
It might take a shift in mindset to accept that “Global North” countries can start learning from the Global South. You do not always have the right answer and policy in the North. There’s always something you might learn. We must reach that level of thinking. Cooperation on equal footing works only if you accept that we have something you can learn from us.
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Ambassador Christine Nkulikiyinka, CEO of Rwanda Cooperation — Rwanda’s development cooperation agency. Christine Nkulikiyinka has been Ambassador of the Republic of Rwanda to the Nordic Countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland) from July 2015 to September 2021. Prior to moving to Stockholm, she served as Rwanda’s Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany from July 2009 to July 2015. Currently, she heads Rwanda Cooperation, which was set up following the immense interest from other (African) countries to learn from Rwanda’s successful development examples and exchange ideas.
Email Addresses to reach out: nkulikiyinka@cooperation.rw and info@cooperation.rw
Website: www.cooperation.rw
Further Reading: Triangular cooperation | BMZ.
