Raban Hayugima Takes Pride in Being a Teacher

Always dapper and with a perennial grin, Raban Hayugima is a fourth-year accounting student at the School of Finance and Banking (SFB) in Kigali. On a cramped but leisurely mutatu ride out to Kayonza a while ago, Raban shared with me a little bit about himself, his experiences with Indego Africa’s artisan partners, and his thoughts on his and their futures.

On pace to graduate from SFB this December, Raban has set his sights on a career in accounting, hoping to secure long-term employment with an established accounting firm. His intermediate personal objective is to pursue international certification from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. In the meantime, Raban complements his university studies with professional experience teaching at Indego Africa partner cooperatives Twiyubake and Cocoki.

Raban notes with enthusiasm how administering the Financial Management and Entrepreneurship curricula force him to boil complicated concepts from his studies at SFB down into practical and more easily understood lesson plans for his pupils. Any mention of one of two things – either Twiyubake’s higher levels of performance on recent assessments or its record-breaking attendance over the past couple months – cause him to beam with pride. “They are much older women, but I see a lot of potential in Twiyubake.”

Reflecting on some of the unique challenges posed by teaching in classrooms such as Twiyubake, Raban recounted a day when “at the beginning of the lesson one member got traumatized after hearing a song on the radio and the woman remembered what happened to her in the genocide.” After briefly considering cancelling the remainder of class, Raban opted instead to pause to allow the traumatized women to collect herself amidst comforting from her colleagues before continuing on his lesson on supply chains and sourcing raw materials. “After a few minutes, things got better.”

Raban himself lost his mother in the 1994 Genocide. Believing that his father had also perished, he was cared for by his neighbors from a very young age. This household of neighbors – unfortunately not at all uncommon in Rwanda during that period – raised him all the way until the age of ten when he encountered an acquaintance of his father’s who immediately recognized the uncanny father-son resemblance. Apparently, his father had managed to escape and link up with the Rwandan Patriotic Front, where he enlisted and served in a medical unit. His father had likewise never known that Raban survived and, once finally reunited, Raban moved in to live with him first in the Northen Province and then in Kigali.

Most recently, Raban is part of a talented Indego Africa special task force, which also includes his fellow SFB peer Sosthene Ndayisaba, Country Director Casey Cobell, and Senior Entrepreneurship Officer Alex Kennedy, that is working with Cocoki and Covanya on developing advanced organizational systems. With each cooperative seeing steadily increasing revenues this year, such systems are essential to tracking income and expenses and to maintaining an effective production schedule. Following this targeted initiative, Raban and Sosthene will spearhead rolling out an advanced Business Planning curriculum – the product of many hours of research, discussion, and refinement – at Cocoki and Covanya.

Many many thanks Raban for all of the hard work and for your valuable contributions to the Indego Africa community. I know that the members of Twiyubake and Cocoki appreciate it and so do we.

-Conor French

(Photos: at top, Raban is presented with a woven bracelet making him an honorary member of Twiyubake and, at bottom, he bids farewell to members of Harvard Business School's Immersion Experience Program)

SPECIAL VIDEO: Revisiting Emelienne's Graduation

As a colorful and engaging postscript to our earlier post on Emelienne Nyiramana’s graduation from the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Entrepreneurship Program at Rwanda’s School of Finance and Banking (available HERE), here is a brief documentary entitled “Emelienne Graduates” that captures the triumphant spirit of that day.



Link for blog subscribers HERE.

We at Indego Africa often find ourselves delicately balancing the importance of recognizing the tragedies, horrors, and traumas experienced by our artisan partners against our overwhelming desire to portray them as we see them every day – as promising, thoughtful, and increasingly sophisticated businesswomen. With that latter sentiment in mind, classify “Emelienne Graduates” as a tribute to a true rising Rwandese rockstar (in the business sense of course).

As Emelienne herself put it in a recent interview: “In my childhood I never thought I’d be anything. I never thought I’d be a woman who can make something to be sold in America. But today, the fact that I do these things, the fact that I was picked out of 100 women to attend the Goldman Sachs [10,000 Women] training, showed me that if I keep working with courage, I’m going to take another step, and I’m going to be somebody.”

Perhaps even more tellingly, she then shifted to the macro-significance of what she and her colleagues at Cocoki are doing: “We feel that we have pride because we’re good examples to the other women…we have that pride because we are women who accepted to work and who will develop the country.”

Carrying forward the flag of the recent centenary celebration of International Women’s Day, Emelienne’s self-awareness and grasp of her role not only within her own family but also within an increasingly crucial demographic in her native country holds immense promise.

In many ways, the future of Rwanda and many other African nations rests in the hands of entrepreneurial women like Emelienne. And, at least in the case of Rwanda, it is reassuring to know just how adroit and dexterous those hands already are.

-Conor French

(The full version of the above-referenced interview of Emelienne conducted by the ISOKO Institute for Entrepreneurship in Kigali is available HERE.)

School Is In: A Tuesday with Abasangiye

The eye-opening backstory behind the women of Abasangiye, and the collaboration between Indego Africa, Foundation Rwanda, and Survivors Fund that brought them together, was previously chronicled in a prior post entitled “The Resilient Women of Abasangiye.”

It is 8:00 a.m. at Abasangiye, an early-stage textile cooperative located in the Kayonza District of Rwanda, and all 25 members are seated in a converted workspace laughing, exchanging stories, and anxiously awaiting the arrival of their Kinyarwanda literacy instructor Jean Marie Vianney Kwitonda. For the next two hours these 25 women will learn the basics of a language that they have spoken their entire lives, but that over 60% had never learned to read or write.

The atmosphere in the classroom is focused and upbeat as Jean Marie transcribes the word “yamuragi- ye” across the chalkboard and each woman practices deciphering the word and saying what she believes it to be aloud. Only months ago this scene was unimaginable. Most members had to begin by learning the Kinyarwanda alphabet. Prior to undertaking their first literacy lesson in 2010, three members of Abasangiye professed embarrassment to Indego Africa staff that they “didn’t even know how to hold a pen.”

Literacy is only one of several disciplines in which the women of Abasangiye are proving to be quick studies; their broad-based training regimen also spans business management, entrepreneurship, and advanced sewing. Once the morning training ends, each member returns to work on a purchase order recently placed by Indego Africa for market tote bags and textile ball ornaments. Guided by the deft and practiced hands of Jacqueline Muteri and Gloriose Umatesi, seamstresses at another Indego Africa partner cooperative Cocoki, the production quality and capacity of the members’ sewing is sharply on the rise.

While sewing machines continue to hum, Eugene Nteziyaremye is in transit to Kayonza where at 2:00 p.m. he will launch into his semiweekly lessons in English and then advanced Kinyarwanda. When Eugene arrives at Abasangiye, the women delight in walking him through a highlight reel of their early morning coursework before proudly thrusting new prototypes they have sewn into his hands. Noting their pride and dedication, Eugene reported that “Every woman wanted to be the first to write a correct sentence. The class was very motivated.”

With nearly perfect attendance in their training programs, Abasangiye continues to exemplify what is possible when great passion meets great opportunity. Joined in their economic, physical, familial, and emotional struggles, each member is coming to terms with her past and creating a brighter future for herself and her family.

And while passing a day in Kayonza undoubtedly speaks volumes about the commitment of these 25 women, it also serves up a powerful reminder of the far-reaching impact that access to education can have in the lives of so many women around the globe.

-Conor French and Kristen Waeber

(Photos: at top, Odette benefits from some hands-on instruction from Gloriose and, at bottom, members of Abasangiye crowd around Eugenie as she fills out an Indego Africa purchase order)