By Jim Herne, January 2020
Between 1985 and 1990 I lived in Kigali, Rwanda, while I was managing the USAID funded Rwanda Private Enterprise Development project. This was a five-year, $5M, small business development project focusing on agriculture and food processing. At the time Kigali was more of a big village than an actual city, as the population was around 200,000 inhabitants and most of the buildings were what was left over from the Belgian colonial days. The center of the city was pretty small and most embassies were located there, along with the Belgian school, the American Club, the Mille Collines Hotel and the main “supermarket” in town. In November of 2019 I had an opportunity to return to Rwanda, as a volunteer for the USAID funded Farmer-to-Farmer program, and I was amazed at the changes that have taken place since 1990.