Dr. Doris Picard Uwicyeza said they will continue to strengthen the scorecard to serve Rwandans even better.
Rwanda Governance Board (RGB) on Thursday, November 21, released the 11th edition of the Rwanda Governance Scorecard (RGS), which indicates that the Safety and Security remains the highest-performing pillar with a score of 93.82%, with Rwandans showing more satisfaction in the performance of organs charged with the two aspects.
The RGS is a home-grown quantifiable index that consistently gauges the state of governance in Rwanda. Like in the previous editions, this year’s scorecard assessed the state of governance based on eight pillars namely: Rule of Law Political Rights and Civil Liberties Participation and Inclusiveness Safety and Security, Investing in Human and Social Development Anti-corruption, Transparency, and Accountability Quality of Service Delivery Economic and Corporate Governance.
In RGS 11th edition, four out of eight pillars recorded a slight improvement. Safety and Security continue to lead all pillars in performance with a score of 93.82%. The Participation and Inclusiveness pillar achieved a slight improvement rate of 1.80%.
This improvement is attributed to the improvement in the performance of the “Decentralisation” indicator which scored 89.24% up from 75.79% in the previous edition. The Quality of Service Delivery pillar recorded a significant rate of decline of 2.49% compared to the other pillars.
Attendees of the launch peruse through the RGS 11th edition.
This decline is a result of the poor performance of the variable of “Level of citizen satisfaction with internet connectivity” under the Service delivery through ICT indicator which scored 24.40%
Since the inception of RGS in 2010, Safety and Security has been the highest-performing pillar, confirming the government’s commitment to ensuring security as a foundational aspect of socio-economic transformation.
On the other hand, the pillars of Investing in Human and Social Development; Quality of Service Delivery, and Economic and Corporate Governance have consistently ranked among the lowest over the years, highlighting areas that require further attention and improvement to attain wholistic transformation.
How they performed
Out of 35 indicators in the current edition, 20 scored 85% and above. These indicators, grouped under their respective pillars, including Rule of Law, where the Performance of the legislature scored 9.33%, performance of the prosecution at 90.17% and access to justice with 86.02%.
Similarly, it terns of Political Rights and Civil Liberties, respect for human rights and core international conventions scored 95.54%, political organisations got 91.85%, access to public information scored 86.75% while democratic rights and freedoms scored 85.23% in the latest RGS.
In regard to the best performing pillar, Safety and Security scored highly, with the aspect of maintaining security scoring an impressive 96.92%, national security with a score of 95.54%), reconciliation, social cohesion and unity with 95.32%), while personal and property safety at 87.51%.
In the area of Anti-corruption, Transparency and Accountability, the sub-pillar of Transparency scored 96.07%, incidence of corruption (86.51%), and accountability 86.36%). When it comes to Participation and Inclusiveness: Power sharing and inclusiveness scored 93.80%), decentralisation 89.24% and citizen participation at 88.06%.
This year’s RGS also shows that investing in Human and Social Development, in health is at 87.80% while in the pillar of Economic and Corporate Governance, foreign trade and industrialisation scored 87.14%. The least impressive pillar in terms of performance was Quality of Service Delivery, where Service delivery in transformational governance is at 86.43% -scoring the least.
In the RGS 11th edition, there are three most improved indicators compared to seven in the previous edition with the indicator of Decentralisation recording the highest rate of improvement of 13.45% emanating from the improvement in the performance of its two variables Central government transfer to the decentralised entities – Block grant (30.91%), and Districts own revenue (11.20%).
Dr. Doris Uwiceza Picard, CEO RGB reiterated the importance of the scorecard in indicating the state of governance and to show how satisfied the population is the leadership and institutions.
She pointed out that they are jointly assessing the status of the pillars and working with the concerned institutions to see what can be done to further improve the that the performance of the different areas, in line with the expectations of the citizens.
“This scorecard is one of the tools established by RGB to fulfill its responsibilities and mandate of properly monitoring the implementation of good governance, with the aim of continuously showing the country its status based on the goals it has set for itself and also observing the expectations of international community from us as a country,” CEO Uwicyeza said.
She emphasized that this governance scorecard has become a source reliable data that can be relied upon in decision-making, based on the methodology used to capture the feedback of the citizens. Uwicyeza called on the private sector, non-governmental organizations and government institutions to strengthen collaboration in continuing to promote good governance in the country.
The Representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Dr. Fatmata Lovetta Sesay, commended the survey findings, especially the pillars that are at the forefront of public satisfaction such as safety, security and others which touch the lives of the people.
UNDP’s Dr. Fatmata Lovetta Sesay.
“This scorecard provides us with valuable insights into the nation’s governance landscape, offering a clear picture of where we are excelling and where we are called upon to focus our improvement efforts,” she said.
“Since the inception of RGS, in 2010, the pillar “safety and security” remains the best performer. These consistent stellar results create an enabling environment for other sectors to perform better for Rwanda’s development,” she said.
The United Nations Resident Coordinator to Rwanda, Ozonnia Ojielo commended the Government of Rwanda for the notable progress across key governance areas, emphasizing the critical role of good governance in driving the National Transformation Strategy II (NST2) and theUnited Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF 2024 – 2028) and the 2030 Agenda.
“Inclusive governance is a journey and the Governance Scorecard shows our collective commitment to redirection & progress with onw goal; a development journey, grounded in African solutions 4 African problems,” Ojielo said.
UN Resident Coordinator Ozzonia Ojielo
The Rwanda Governance Scorecard (RGS) is a national index published by the Rwanda Governance Board (RGB) to consistently assess the state of governance in Rwanda. RGS objectives are to generate credible and reliable data on governance, to serve as an evidence based source to inform policy, decision making and implementation.
It contributes to current scientific and contextualized knowledge about economic, social and political governance in Rwanda. RGS is a crucial tool that tracks the Country’s performance in relation to her national, regional and global governance commitments.
RGS places global governance standards and home-grown approaches at the center of its method which makes it uniquely relevant to both the international and national contexts. The RGS 11th edition data are comparable to the previous editions’ to allow the assessment of the performance trend of each pillar since the first edition.
Additionally, RGS is continuously refined and strengthened by adjusting its methods of assessment. The performance of every RGS edition is comparable with the previous editions to allow the trend analysis of each pillar. Additionally, RGS is continuously refined and strengthened by adjusting its methods of assessment.
The eight pillars of RGS and 35 indicators were maintained but the number of variables decreased from 151 in RGS 10th edition to 150 variables in RGS 11th edition. RGS uses both primary and secondary data from various sources. Its methods are grounded in international standards as well as in an in-depth understanding of the Rwandan context.
Each RGS edition presents a section on the implementation status of the recommendations from the previous edition in order to track their implementation progress. As a result, the 11th edition of RGS presents the implementation status of the recommendations of RGS 10th edition to ascertain the extent to which issues raised were addressed.
