H.E, Paul Kagame said last year that the people are Rwanda's only source of wealth hence the need to invest in the education system. Taking into consideration that human resources have been greatly affected by the war, do you also believe that the Rwandan people are the main asset of your country today?

Yes, I do believe that the Rwandan people are a major asset to their country. Rwanda at this very moment does not have any significant natural resources or even the natural resources available cannot be exploited because no resources. Take an example of the methane gas discovered in the 1930's up to now it still lies unexploited and the are some other examples.

Therefore inadequate human resource base has contributed to this and the education we are committed to, is geared at solving such problems. When you look at the education budget, 30% of the national budget has been accorded to this sector. This clearly indicates the president's will to uplift the education standards in the country.

One of the key objectives of the vision 2020 is the reduction of poverty levels, which implies first the implementation of a good education system. The budget allocated to your ministry is one of the largest. Which areas do you mainly allocate this budget?

Before that, let me first give you a review of the history of the Rwandan education system. After the 1994 genocide, schools were destroyed, students and teachers killed and there fore the biggest challenge was to rebuild the education system. When the primary schools opened in 1994, we had 941,012 pupils now we have 1,534,510. That means on average 100,000 pupils per year.

In '95/'96, when the secondary schools started, we had 50,000 students and now there are more than 40,000 students, which is close to three times. The National University of Butare opened with 2,800 students. Today there are close to 157,210 students at the university and when other public and private tertiary institutions are included, the figure goes to 15,353. Therefore making education accessible to all Rwandans was made a reality. Before the war, there was ethnic discrimination deep rooted in he education sector. But now for students to qualify for secondary school education or university, there are national exams to be done. So, bringing equal access or equity to education was one biggest achievement so far registered.

In the primary level we have a 74% native enrolment though with major quality problems to address. 81% of the primary school teachers are qualified and in secondary school 51,9% are qualified teachers. In higher education 30% of the lecturers hold a PHD. So you see that we have a crisis on the quality of education but we are trying to improve that. We have other good efforts showing many programs with DFID and the African Development Bank to support the primary level especially with textbooks to improve the quality.

You recently created a teacher training institution. Has it tried to answer some of these issues?

Yes, we have the Kigali Institute of education, which offers pre-service and in-service. For the in-service arrangement, there's a program to train 2500 teachers through distance learning. The African Development Bank, USAID and the DFID, which gave 2 million pounds when we launched the programme in January, support this programme. We have 10 centres through out the country and so we hope to achieve 100% quality in the next few years.

We are training some of our own lecturers from abroad UK, US, Canada, South Africa Belgium, India and France. The government to show it's commitment to quality education sent 400 students to India to study science, management and IT; and Rwanda is committed to meeting some of the International targets like universal free primary for all. Now you asked me about the budget allocations, and I think this shows the key priority areas. But primary requires more budget because of the big numbers. I am committed to a more balanced sector at the three levels of primary, secondary and tertiary institutes.

Most of the families of the children going to school have been victims of the war. Do you have the tools to help them believe again in the development of a democratic society?

We have a joint program with the commission of National Unity and reconciliation of developing a curriculum that seeks to answer the above. Now for those children that cannot raise tuition fees, there's a program known as FARGE that seeks to address this issue. It carries 5% of the National budget and does cater for mainly primary and secondary school educate.

Therefore such a program is to show them that we are with them and are trying to address all issues that are affecting them. The human rights commission has also played a supplementary role in promoting Current Curriculum Civics Education. What you are saying is that today your education system can play a role in the process of national reconciliation.

The fact that 1.57 million go to primary school with 26,024 teachers emphasizing the current government programmes is a basis for this. At secondary school are boarding schools where students from different regions attend. The university takes on people from different ethnic background and different regions and for that it is a strong tool to attaining Reconciliation. I think education is the field that can be credited for initiating Unity and Reconciliation.