Rwanda sets up cluster industries

LEARNING: At the Gatsibo Leather Community Processing Center, the government with technical assistance from Italy is developing local capacity in the processing of leather into finished items like shoes. (Courtesy photo)

KIGALI, Rwanda — The government has adopted the cluster system to help Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) steadily grow.

“So far, we have 20 SME clusters developed and among these, six of them which include the Leather SME cluster, banana wine cluster, Irish potato cluster, Dairy, Wood and Tailoring clusters will be implemented this year 2014”, Annoncée Kuradusenge, the Director of Entrepreneurship Skill at the Ministry of Trade and Industry said last week.

SMEs in Rwanda are regarded as the core engine to economic development and therefore this is why the government is committed to supporting and strengthening them.

The government has continued to develop different strategies through trade ministry (MINICOM) including the SME cluster creation programme.

Kuradusenge said: “A business plan for Community Processing Centers (CPC) was developed with the main aim of addressing the different challenge faced by SMEs which mainly include lack of access to technology that can help produce quality products, lack of access to market, lack of access to finance. CPCs can help SMEs solve all such queries.”

One of the developed CPCs is the Gatsibo Leather Community Processing Center where so far the government and Italy are jointly building capacity for leather artisans in the country.

The government has been able to install about 24 leather making machines with support from Italy worth Rwf40million (nearly $60,000)

An Italian leather expert , Dr. Sergio La Verghetta, who also happens to be a Director of the Agency for the promotion of Foreign Trade and the Internationalization of Italian Company (ICE), will be training leather artisans in the country according to Kadusenge

“This trainer will be paid about Euro60,000 for the whole period he will be training Rwandan,” Kuradusenge said.

Karadusenge said this was going to add value to the products since those making them will have attained better skills.

According to a MINICOM press release issued last week, the trade minister Francois Kanimbe said the centers will provide facilities that will help producers at the community level make quality products but, not have to bear the total cost of the machinery and technology to process such products.

“When such people are well experienced they can always go back and apply the learnt techniques to their different businesses and hence be able to produce better products,” Kanimbe said.

The recently launched leather training period was mainly meant for the Star Leather company employees.

The company works closely with the Business Development Fund, who will go on and train other leather artisans to help create a more skillful population .

Marcellin Kubwimana, in charge of capacity building at BDF, said Rwandans will be able to get a subsidized training where most of the fees will be paid by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), but they will have to pay a small amount of fees.

“We will be working with the Masaka Leather industry which has most of the leather materials and is supported by UNIDO and through this people will be able to get training at a very low price,” he said.

By Agnes Bateta, Monday, March 03rd, 2014


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