Adaptive Social Protection in Rwanda: ‘Climate?proofing’ the Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme

Rwanda has a high rate of rural poverty, population density and pressures on its natural resource base. One government response has been a social protection intervention, the Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme (VUP). VUP provides ‘public works’ employment for members of extremely poor households with able?bodied members, and ‘direct support’ cash transfers for poor households without members who can work. Many public works projects focus on environmental protection. VUP also promotes risk reduction activities related to food security and related health or nutrition issues. With increasing weather?related hazards and possibly climate change, administrators recognise the need to ‘climate?proof’ VUP in a manner that integrates social protection with disaster risk management, climate change adaptation and food security. This article highlights the potential for social protection policies and programmes in Rwanda to increase household and community resilience, by applying concepts of adaptive social protection and ‘no regrets’ approaches in a territorial context

Statistics versus livelihoods: questioning Rwanda’s pathway out of poverty

Recent statistics indicate that poverty in Rwanda decreased impressively between 2006 and 2014. This seems to confirm Rwanda’s developmental progress. This article however argues for a more cautious interpretation of household survey data. The authors contrast macro-level statistical analysis with in-depth field research on livelihood conditions. Macro-economic numbers provide interesting information, however differentiated evidence is required to understand how poverty ‘works’ in everyday life. On the basis of the Rwandan case study, the authors conclude that because of the high political stakes of data collection and analysis, and given that relations of power influence the production of knowledge on poverty, cross-checking is crucial

Evaluating Graduation: Insights from the Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme in Rwanda

This article examines poverty reduction arising from the Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme (VUP) by comparing the status of households receiving benefits for the first time in 2014 against households which received benefits in previous years and against non?beneficiary households. Key findings are that according to the community assessment of poverty (Ubudehe), beneficiaries of both Direct Support and Public Works have improved their situation, including asset holdings, savings, the ability to withstand shocks and perceived food security, and have therefore exited the programme. Other factors affect the progress of a household, including the presence of elderly household members, literacy of household head and access to microfinance from the Financial Services component of VUP. The programme is currently exploring whether it is possible to define a ‘package’ which constitutes a base for sustainable graduation, which, in addition to cash transfer and asset acquisition, should include linkages to skills?building programmes and employment opportunities

Conducting fieldwork in Rwanda

Despite the plethora of studies critiquing the political climate in post-genocide Rwanda, it is possible for researchers to conduct fieldwork in Rwanda. However, all aspects of the fieldwork being conducted must be sensitive to the highly politicised research setting and must satisfy criteria established by the government of Rwanda. This research note is intended as a guide for foreign researchers who, due to the difficulties associated with getting current information from outside Rwanda on official requirements, often have a limited understanding of what will be expected of them upon their arrival

English and Marx's 'general intellect': The construction of an English-speaking élite in Rwanda

The Rwandan government mandated in 2008 that its education system would cease to be French-medium, and instead become English-medium. Both the government and the media have represented this decision as economically-motivated: specifically, it has been claimed that an English-speaking workforce will be necessary to compete on the world stage. But the relationship between the politics of language in transnational capitalism and Rwandan language policy has yet to be analysed from a critical Marxist perspective. The purposes of this article are two-fold. By engaging with Virno (2007) and Ives' (2016) rearticulations of Marx's theory of the ‘general intellect,’ it aims to demonstrate that this concept necessarily includes an engagement with English in the context of cognitive capitalism. In applying the concept of ‘general intellect’ to the dynamics of ‘global’ English, this piece attempts to elucidate the role of the capitalist system in encouraging the spread of English, with a focus on the Rwandan context. This article demonstrates that Rwanda's education system has been reorganised according to the particular form of the ‘general intellect’ that is required by transnational capital. Specifically, this framework casts English as a particularly important cognitive skill. Crucially, Marx's theory allows us to discuss the construction of ‘selective intellectuality’ in Rwanda, and to demonstrate that this entails the reproduction of class-based hierarchies determined in part by access to capital, and access to English