by Tom Walsh
Free Press columnist
Twelve years after a genocidal tribal war in which 800,000 people perished, the central African nation of Rwanda aims to become a shining example of good economic development policies among poor countries.
Sort of like the Singapore of Africa, says Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
To that end, Kagame's government has signed a 5-year contract with the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan to provide leadership training to high-level ministers and department heads, plus help Rwanda create a Western-style collegiate business school in which Rwandan faculty can do most of the teaching.
Launching Rwanda on a trajectory toward economic prosperity is a tall order for a country in which 83.7% of the people live on less than $2 a day and where life expectancy is a mere 44 years or so.
"I got depressed reading about it. What happened there with the genocide was so gruesome," said Robert Pasick of Ann Arbor, an organizational psychologist and executive coach who will soon head to Rwanda to run the first in a series of seminars on leadership, strategy and finance for Rwandan government leaders, beginning Sept. 4.
Pasick is affiliated with the Davidson Institute, founded in 1992 with $30 million from Detroit Pistons and Guardian Industries owner Bill Davidson with a mission to help emerging economies prosper in a free-market global economy.
The institute's initial focus was on research projects in eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Its scope then expanded to include China, India and ultimately African nations such as Morocco and now Rwanda.
Pasick has worked on projects in the Czech Republic and Chile, "but nothing quite like this," he said. Referring to the wholesale slaughter of Tutsi people by the majority Hutu tribe and subsequent reprisals after the Hutu regime was overthrown in 1994, Pasick said he'll be stressing the importance of team building to the government leaders.
"There has been a lot of divisiveness there," Pasick said, a classic understatement. The horrors of the 1994 genocide were vividly presented in the 2004 film "Hotel Rwanda," in which actor Don Cheadle played the part of real-life hero Paul Rusesabagina, a Rwandan hotel manager who housed more than a thousand Tutsi refugees.
Kagame, president of Rwanda since 2000 and a Tutsi by birth, has been pushing to de-emphasize tribal ancestry in the national culture, although skeptics note that Tutsis hold a large majority of key government posts.
Robert Kennedy, executive director of the Davidson Institute, has made four trips to Rwanda in the past year to hammer out details of the 5-year engagement, which also involves MBA students at U-M's Stephen Ross School of Business in specific research projects in Rwanda.
"The world has 4 billion people living on $6 a day or less," Kennedy told me, "and what we've done here is broaden our base to look at emerging markets globally. We're geographically agnostic."
Because of the institute's work and U-M Ross School's emphasis on active engagement of students in real-world projects -- as opposed to theoretical research -- "we now have international development agencies coming to us for help and expertise," Kennedy said.
Rwanda's stated goal is to become a middle-class nation by 2020, but a U.S. State Department summary of its current investment climate suggests it won't be an easy journey.
"Rwanda lacks a middle class," the summary states. "Energy production and distribution are inadequate, private investment is poor, the commercial court system is in a nascent stage, and the banking system is very conservative and poorly developed."
Clearly, the Davidson Institute's latest challenge is no slam dunk.