Muraho, Kigali!
Hello, Kigali! We're all here. The entire CSC Rwanda 1 team arrived by last Saturday. I was kindly greeted at the airport by our in-country CSC project manager, who had to make so many airport trips in a two-day period. At lunch, I finally met with most of my teammates. Two arrived later that evening. It was great to finally meet in person, after 3 months of remote interaction. Everyone is so nice.
I had never previously seen clouds so thick, so white, so close
I wondered whether those shiny rooftops caused the houses to get hot
The hotel is quite nice, especially after we had been warned that accommodation would not be comparable to usual business travel standard. The hotel oversees a golf course and the view of the hills is magnificent. By now, I am finding out that you get such views from almost anywhere because remember there are a thousand hills. The down side to the nice hotel standard is that meal costs are pretty steep at the hotel's restaurant. On the plus side, everyone seems to be very nice and friendly. The sub-standard part mostly revolves around electrical power going out every now and then (coming back very fast, but sometimes the interruptions are frequent) and spotty wifi access. Modern luxuries considering that most of Rwanda still does not have access to electricity. Internet penetration is much higher due to mobile use.
Magnificent view from my room's balcony
After lunch, we had a quick driving tour of the city. Hilly, it certainly is. Some of the sights were not all that different from Mauritius. The streets. The shops with store signs in English or French. Some of the buildings. The chaotic driving. Oh, the smog!
When we got back to the hotel, we found out that sub team 1 (mine) and sub team 2 had meetings planned at 5pm with our respective stakeholders. I was so exhausted from the traveling and mad days of preparation that I admit I was glad that ours didn't show up ;) Sub team 2 ended up meeting with theirs for over an hour. I was not prepared for that kind of engagement only hours after landing.
We had a warm welcome dinner on Saturday night, where we got to know each other as well as our hosts from DOT a little better. It was the first of too many buffet meals to come, and it's only been 5 days! We also met our two interns from Carnegie Mellon University Rwanda (grad school). We were lucky to have one of them assigned to our sub team.
Orientation started on Sunday morning, with many of us still jet lagged. Then we got a chance to discuss further with our in-country advisor who was very knowledgeable about our statement of work (SOW) given that he put it together with the beneficiaries. He answered a lot of our questions. Then our sub team's stakeholder arrived in the afternoon, and we got a chance to find out more from her. It turned out that she had only found out about the project and the role she would play on the project over the weekend and that she had to come back from her leave that was still supposed to go on for another two weeks. She had not been part of the SOW preparation and could not answer all our questions. Luckily, she was very knowledgeable and definitely the guide that we need for this project.
On Monday, the Honourable Minister of Youth and Information & Communication Technology (MYICT), Jean Philbert Nsengimana, kicked off the first CSC program in Rwanda. The projects, ours in particular, are his personal vision, and it was good to hear it from him in his own words. Very articulate and visionary guy. Then each sub-team presented one slide on our project objective, approach, and deliverables. It was very important for us to impress on everyone that the end deliverable would be a strategy and high level design proposal, not an implemented solution.
After a photo op, our sub team was first to present to a rather large audience in a rather intimidating setting (felt like Parliament). Unfortunately, the Honourable Minister could not stay. Again, we stressed that the scope of the project would be defined by the end of the first week. And that we were seeking participation from the key stakeholders in a 2-day Design Thinking workshop for the first week. The remaining folks had some pretty tough questions for us. We did ok. Mostly, each stakeholder had their own agenda and vision of what this project could become. What was clear was that everyone had very high expectations of this project. For one, they did not want it to become a report that would get shelved and forgotten. Afterward, we went for a well deserved lunch at l'Hotel des Mille Collines (made famous by Hotel Rwanda).
On Tuesday, we got to sit down with the Honourable Minister to hear about his vision for the Smart Rwanda Dashboard. He has a very clear vision, and he came well prepared, with notes and sketches in his notebook. Very impressive guy. He knows his business. He knows technology. He speaks very eloquently. He comes from the private sector, and he might have been appointed by the President himself because of his track record. After a very productive meeting that was over by 10am, the rest of the day felt a bit sluggish. We had a phone call that afternoon, and ended up having a late lunch for which we had to wait forever (food wasn't all that great either). Then we had planned to attend a webcast by our same Honourable Minister of MYICT. After struggling with the poor wifi situation, I had to give up, and so we resumed our work for what turned out to be a couple of hours longer than we had intended.
Our Wednesday morning was spent at the Prime Minister's Office to get demos of two dashboards that they use. By then, passing our bags through X-ray machines and walking through metal detectors were standard protocol. In fact, we have to go through a metal detector daily to enter our hotel and the supermarket. At government buildings, they also verify cars (mirror under the car) and, in the case of the PMO, they also checked under the hood, even of their staff (Director level, no less).
Demo and contextual inquiry: Agencies are coming one by one with meet with these support guys to get their data in!
In the afternoon, we continued to prepare for our Design Thinking workshop. The team is very enthusiastic. With a very very crash course from me, we're each going to facilitate an activity. Our concern is that we have no idea what to expect in the morning in terms of participation. Our stakeholder sent invitations to at least 25 stakeholder agencies, but this is very short notice and we're asking for folks in rather high places. We've prepared for a workshop for up to 4 teams, but we're bracing ourselves for either only a handful of participants or an overwhelming response, the former being more concerning. We had to shorten the workshop to a super abridged version, with only the activities that would most benefit from the involvement of these highly placed folks. So it will be a half-day workshop (down from 2 days). Besides participant availability, the main driver is (lack of) resources. All day meetings require lunch to be provided, and such workshops are usually held at a hotel. We hope for decent (and engaging) participation. We'll find out soon enough.
#ibmcsc rwanda 1