The lake itself is also very interesting. Since it is situated in a volcanic area there are some special circumstances. Deep underneath the lake is a huge pocket of methane gas which leaks out into the lake and kills most of the life in it. This gives the water a beautiful green/turquoise colour and makes it very clear but on the other hand it poses a great danger for the people who live in the area around the lake. There is a constant risk that there will be a bigger leakage of gas that could form a big cloud and kill all the people in the area. This could happen either spontaneously or as a result of one of the frequent earthquakes in the region. The reason they know about the gas is that they started examining many of the lakes in Africa after a very unfortunate incident in Cameroon, where several thousand people died after a similar leakage from a lake. They found that Lake Kivu is one of the areas where there’s a risk that the same thing could happen again but on a much larger scale since there is more people living in the area and the lake is much bigger. The lake is also very deep and is one of the world’s biggest fresh water reservoirs. The scenery is beautiful with the volcanic mountains surrounding it.
The actual planning days were good and productive. We discussed a lot of issues for the coming year and analysed some of the developments during the former. One thing we have to handle in some way is what the Rwandan government calls Division of Labour. The government here is a very interesting development partner since they have a big ownership and are very much driven to achieve progress for their country. This is exactly according to the Paris Agenda (international guidelines for development cooperation) where it is said that the receiving government should own the process and that the aid should be channelled through the country’s own systems and the work should be led by the receiving country and not the donor agencies. Therefore they should tell us what they want and how they want it and the donors should supply it if they think it’s reasonable. The Rwandan government have now developed a division of labour framework for the donors, in an effort to decrease the transaction costs of having many donors active in the country.
They made the suggestion that all donors should only be able to be active in three different sectors (sectors which they have defined themselves) and thereby concentrate their funds and efforts on fewer areas and projects but hopefully with better results. This way we would all complement each other and not duplicate our projects at the same time as it is easier for the government to keep track of who does what and there would be less meetings and representation that takes up a lot of the government’s time and money. As it is now, even though the different donors started the process of adhering to the Paris Agenda and harmonising our efforts we still do a lot of the same things and work with a lot of different projects without a clear focus. The challenge for Sida is that we also have the Swedish government’s agenda to follow. Our government have its own opinion of what they want Sida to work with in Rwanda, which does not necessarily coincide with the sectors that the Rwandan government has suggested we be active in.
One of the days we also had RBM training (Results Based Management), something that has been increasingly popular the last couple of years. RBM is not very complicated really. The principles behind it stipulates that all projects should be designed with the results in mind and that results are all that matters, making activities totally superfluous if they don’t lead to the intended results. Thereby it’s very important that you have clear goals formulated when you design a project and that you develop clear results indicators to be able to measure if you’ve reached the intended goals. Not very complicated in theory, much harder to do in practice! Not everything is easy to measure, or even possible to measure, and some activities might actually have a value in themselves even though they might not achieve the results intended. However it is necessary to consider the feasibility and effectiveness as well as efficiency of the projects and programs when it comes to development so that you don’t waste money on projects that does not yield results.
Something has to be said about the hotel we stayed at as well. It was called Holiday Hotel and was a default choice really. We had already booked another hotel when, less than a week before the trip, they called and cancelled our reservation and Holiday Hotel was the only one that could offer 20 rooms on such short notice. Unfortunately it was quite bad. They did not have mosquito nets in any of the rooms and in some of the rooms either the water did not work or there was only cold water. The food was not very good and always delayed causing delays in our very packed schedule. The beds were huge but incredibly uncomfortable and the rooms were quite expensive despite all these flaws.
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