Rwanda: Agaciro Development Fund is a dreadful and dangerous joke

By Silas Kamiya

Kigali,  Rwanda
August 24, 2012

Any simple arithmetic indicates that the forced collection of funds will not work for long. It is rather being a killing tool to starve innocent citizens who must give away their mince revenues needed for family basic necessity.

The practice that is already a month old showed its disastrous results. Small businesses are closing bankrupted by the desperate Agaciro collectors who compete to show their work in order to save their own lives face to their greedy leaders. Asking an already impoverished peasant to contribute to the Agaciro development Fund is like to pour some oil on his fire. The average farmers who have been suffering from irrational agricultural policies have no more resources left for themselves when their supervisors forcefully retrieve their livestock mostly for themselves under the pretense of funding the ordered Agaciro fundraising. The salaried population already struggling to make ends meet can’t even provide 10% of the necessary funds to run for a single month.

The fallacy to count on Rwandans abroad is also surrealistic and silly knowing how many can really make a difference for a national budget. It is been reported that people who are sending some money to their fellows through wiring services are being ripped off by the Agaciro collectors who are imposing the recipients to give up more than half of the money they receive.

Besides, those who can contribute today for the first time are not renewable resources to afford to provide more funds month after month.

The irony is that nothing is being proposed for spending reforms. The high ranked and the well connected to the regime keep burning gas in expensive cars, getting the disproportional salaries without sacrificing an iota of their benefits.

The ridiculous side of this is that nothing is said to stop the causes of the aid cuts in first place: no plan to stop the war in Congo, reduce military expenditures or roll back the top leaders salaries and privileges.

The Agaciro development Fund misleading to be for a public interest is rather pushing every Rwandan and the entire country to an economic precipice to serve the dictatorship that stupidly created the problem and unwilling to reverse the course towards a genuine solution. All the sick is politics and only will heal by getting rid of the military dictatorship.