Military facility becomes technology training centre

A former military school and barracks in Rwanda's capital, Kigali, have been transformed into a training centre where students learn everything from more efficient candle-making and civil engineering to computer technology and food science, the UN Development Programme announced on Thursday.

The administrator of the UNDP Programme, Mark Malloch Brown, visited the facility, known as the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), on Wednesday. The institute has nearly 1,600 full-time students and about 1,160 part timers - 27 percent of who are women.

The Rwandan government launched the institute in 1997 with UNDP support. It was founded three years after the genocide in which some 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus were killed. After that, the country experienced a dearth in technical experts, most of whom were killed or never accounted for.

"In fact today, some 94 per cent of the population still lives in rural areas and most make their living in agriculture, using rudimentary traditional technology," the UNDP reported.

Some of the courses offered at the institute include three and four-year programmes in agricultural and information technologies, management and automotive technology. The first class of students graduated earlier this year.
"Most of them have returned to their home towns and villages to start small businesses and spread new and appropriate technologies," UNDP added.

It said that students were able to tailor their academic programmes to meet individual needs through the school of continuing education and the African Virtual University.
In addition to its academic courses, UNDP said, the institute's Centre for Innovations and Technology Transfer conducted research to develop environmentally friendly technological innovations -- such as solar power to heat water, fuel-saving bread ovens and food processors to lighten the work of farm families -- and find ways to transfer them to rural communities.

Rwanda has an ambitious poverty reduction programme aimed at the rural poor.