Rwanda likely to get $200mn from World Bank to improve education quality

The government of Rwanda and World Bank are in talks to jump in into a project worth USD 200 million, which will boost the quality of education through a wide range of interventions including constructing more classrooms.

The Vice President of World Bank Africa, Hafez Ghanem disclosed the plan after meeting Rwandan Prime Minister, Édouard Ngirente at his office in Kimihurura. The money will consist of loan on which 0.7 percent interest rate will be charged per annum.

“Our objective is to have this programme finalized, approved and signed and agreed sometime this summer, late July or early August. The project is expected to be implemented within three to five years. The aim of the courtesy call was to discuss with the Prime Minister about this programme and the different projects that are in the pipeline to be financed by the global institutions,” Hafez Ghanem opined, as reported by The New Times.

“The Prime Minister stressed the importance of education for economic development, and for fighting poverty, and the need to build more schools to have more classrooms, to have the schools closer to the children, and we are now preparing the USD 200 million project to finance Rwanda’s vision for a better education system,” Ghanem said.

“We are currently discussing what the main areas that will be financed are. It’s clear that there is need for more schools, and more classrooms for existing schools. But there is also need to work on the curriculum, to make sure that teachers are there, [and] the quality of those teacher,” he further cited adding that more details would be shared by two parties once the project is finalized.

Rwanda’s Ministry confronted enough lack of funding to build classrooms to remove the practice of double shifts. The target was to build 3,112 classrooms to phase out double shift in Primary 4 in the coming financial year, The New Times noted.

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