Skip to main content
Skip to sub-navigation
About USAID Our Work Locations Policy Press Business Careers Stripes Graphic USAID Home
United States Agency for International Development Fact Sheet USAID

  Press Home »
Press Releases »
Fact Sheets »
Media Advisories »
Speeches and Test »
FrontLines »
 
Latest Fact Sheets
 
Rwanda

Search


Development Programs In Rwanda


WASHINGTON, DC 20523
PRESS OFFICE
http://www.usaid.gov
Press: (202) 712-4320
Public Information: (202) 712-4810

2004-011

April 05, 2004

The civil war and genocide that ravaged Rwanda prior to 1994 left Rwandans with an unstable government, economy, and society. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has been working with the Government of Rwanda and others for more than a decade to help bring peace, democracy, and stability to Rwandan citizens through a number of programs. USAID efforts have generated successes such as:

Democracy and Governance

  • USAID's Democracy and Governance Team helped the Rwandan Ministry of Justice complete a nationwide computer network system connecting 18 sites, including the central Ministry, Attorney General's Office and Gacaca headquarters with provincial prosecutor offices.
  • USAID assists SERUKA, an organization which has helped promote the role of women in both community reconciliation and justice in post-conflict Rwanda. As a result, women were elected to serve as judges on Gacaca, Rwanda's grassroots war crime trials held at the village level.
  • USAID provided nearly $800,000 for material support of the Gacaca jurisdictions for computers, a case management database, and other necessary equipment and provided ethics training to more than 100 justice sector officials.
  • Programs funded by USAID helped train 106 district accountants to strengthen and standardize the financial accounting system for local government.
  • More than 220 police cadets and officers received professionalism training through USAID-funded programs.
  • USAID helped provide legal education for 177 Anglophone lawyers.
  • Ethnicity-free identity cards were produced and issued with the assistance of USAID.
  • In support of decentralization, USAID financed the implementation of 87 community development projects in 30 districts.

Health

  • In 2003, the United States Government established the first two sites in the world to provide anti-retroviral therapy to treat AIDS patients in urban and rural Rwanda.
  • The Displaced Children and Orphans Fund, which USAID granted $1.6 million, has worked to educate more than 4,000 youth in three districts about discrimination and promotion of acceptance of children and youth affected by or infected with HIV.
  • Voluntary counseling and testing sites for HIV/AIDS, funded by the United States Government, served 85,000 clients in 2003.
  • In 2003, the United States Government increased funding and expanded key health services to 35 sites to prevent mother to child HIV transmission. The expansion also improved services in the following areas, nutritional support, maternal health, and home-based care services.
  • A National Roll-Back Malaria Strategy was adopted to include early treatment for pregnant women.

Violence Prevention

  • Through a $993,728 Victims of Torture grant to the International Rescue Committee for a sexual and gender-based violence program, USAID worked in conjunction with the Ministry of Gender and Women Promotion to train 19 staff to implement a multi-sector provincial sensitization program. By November 2002, 902 Gacaca judges, local nongovernmental organizations, church leaders, health officials, and deputy mayors received training on gender and violence sensitization issues. More than 446 police officers nationwide received training under this program.
  • With USAID assistance, Rwanda conducted its first national quantitative survey aimed to establish incidence rates of the most common forms of gender-based violence to better design projects in the future.
  • USAID initiated regular weekly radio programs to build awareness of gender-based violence and updates on the Gacaca trials. Estimates show that 30 percent of women survivors from the genocide have been reached through this programming.
  • USAID helped fund seminars for national leaders and the media about reconciliation and violence prevention

Rural Economy

  • With more than 90 percent of Rwanda's population involved in agriculture, USAID has helped to increase food supply through dissemination of improved crop varieties and cultivation techniques.
  • USAID assisted private sector operators in increasing their sales of passion fruit and pyrethrum.
  • USAID provided technical assistance, training, and material inputs to more than 60 rural enterprises in Rwanda.
  • A USAID-funded project transformed a revolving grants program to short-term loans with a reimbursement rate of 98 percent among selected women's groups.
  • Coffee processing stations rose from three in 2000 to ten in 2003 and production of fully processed specialty coffee increased from 49 metric tons in 2002 to 334 metric tons in 2003.
  • USAID supported diversified agribusiness enterprises including fisheries, chili pepper, wheat, and honey.

Education

  • Through a grant for the Genocide Survivors Fund, more than $3 million has gone to pay the school fees and related costs for more than 7,500 secondary-school children orphaned by the genocide.
  • The Kigali Institute of Education launched four Distance Learning Centers funded by USAID where secondary school teachers can receive in-service training through computer-assisted learning in order to become fully qualified to teach.
  • USAID formed a public-private alliance to provide a computer for more than half of Rwandan primary schools.

Back to Top ^

Star