By Nana Yaw BARNIE
As delegates to the annual Africa Public Relations Association (APRA 2019) conference in Rwanda, we touched down in Kigali after 11:00 pm on Monday, May 13, 2019, on board Rwandair.
Personally, I was quite expectant in view of the stories I had heard about the country regarding its uncommon cleanliness and the fact that they do not entertain plastics, a fact which compelled me to send my pepper sauce, “shito”, to Nkulenu Industries in Accra to be canned.
For seven days in the capital, Kigali, we really witnessed the Rwandan story and lived its experience. At the hotel, I realized the housekeeper who sent my luggage to my room had left my door ajar, so I exclaimed, “Please, mosquitoes will enter the room!” His quick response was, “There are no mosquitoes here,” as if to ask me, “Don’t you know our city is the cleanest in Africa?”
You could really see awe-inspiring things happening there. You cannot believe that a country which was literally reduced to ashes through genocide could get up its feet and do such amazing stuff after just 25 years as of 2019. You could not but admire their unparalleled cleanliness.
Is it not a sad commentary that Rwanda has a National Airline with a fleet of 14 aircraft as of 2025, yet Ghana has none? A classmate of mine, who is a retired General of the Ghana Armed Forces, described Rwanda as the Singapore of Africa, and I think that is an apt description of what we saw.
Throughout the period, I did not set eyes on heaped refuse or anything close to it, not even in a local market at Chimirongo, comparable to markets in Accra which are engulfed in filth.
We did not find refuse outside the market either, only the visible signs that the place had just been swept clean. We could see a bunch of brooms lying on the floor and wheelbarrows parked by cleaners. The gutters were squeaky clean.
As you are driven along the streets, all you find is greenery. Lawns are consciously well kept, hedges properly and beautifully trimmed, trees deliberately planted, giving you fresh breath and clean air.
It is just incredible. Even in a suburb, compared to say Mamprobi or Kaneshie, you could never find filth, no matter how hard you try. It takes five days, and even sometimes three, to obtain a land title certificate. Ghana, where did we go wrong?
OKADA
They also have their own version of commercial motor bikes, ‘Okada’ which they call ‘moto’. The rider of the ‘moto’ is called ‘motari’, but they are well regulated with uniforms of red, green, and yellow, depending on the Cooperative a ‘motari’ belongs to. Every ‘motari’, I mean every one of the riders belongs to a cooperative. Each ‘motari’ carries two helmets, end of discussion! Not carrying two helmets as a ‘motari’ is treated like a driver not wearing a seatbelt which attracts severe sanctions. I was told that if a ‘motari’ carries only one helmet, it is assumed that he is not working. This picture shows the writer sitting behind a ‘moto’ from CHIC, a popular shopping mall.
If you dare carry a passenger as a ‘motari’ without a second helmet, you can be certain that your bike will be seized by the dutiful green coat Rwandan police whose job is to enforce traffic rules and regulations.
Once seized, your bike will be released to you only after paying the mandatory fine which will, of course, be receipted. In fact, a female colleague of mine, Solace Akomea, and I made the ‘moto’ our preferred mode of transport, even though I have never patronized ‘Okada’ in Ghana for obvious reasons.
We preferred the ‘moto’ because it was cheaper and, of course, faster. It is also as safe as a taxi due to the discipline with which they operated. No ‘motari’ would jump a red light.
The Kigali Convention Centre is another miracle of the Paul Kagame government. According to a staff of the Kigali Convention Centre, who graciously drove us from the Centre to town, an amount of US$300 million was invested in the Convention Centre in 2017, but they had started making profits as of 2019.
Can you believe that? All kinds of conferences, gatherings and meetings are held at the Centre. Even our APRA conference was to be held there, but coincided with another conference to be attended by the Rwandan president.
I never saw hawkers in Kigali, except newspaper vendors, neither did I find ‘pure water’ sellers. You were given paper bags at the supermarkets or wherever you shopped. No polythene bags. Oh, MIRACLE Rwanda!
>>>The writer is Regional Communications Manager at Ghana Water Limited, Accra East Region. He can be reached [email protected]
