I have covered the opening sessions of Rwanda’s annual Leadership Retreats from their early years. For those unfamiliar with these meetings, locally known as Umwiherero, they are annual forums that bring together top public officials. Of recent, representatives of the private sector and civil society as well as district mayors have come on board.

A week ago, I was invited to the opening session of the 9th Leadership Retreat taking place at the Rwanda Military Academy in Gako, Bugesera District.

Because I had not attended the last two or three retreats, I was not sure they were as lively and interesting (from a journalist’s perspective) as the ones I had covered before.

On the bus ride through the splendid lush and beauty of a resurgent Bugesera, with the other invited journalists, I kept wondering what to expect this time round.

For the first time, the leaders were not going to spend five days in the comfort of Akagera Game Lodge or Lake Kivu Serena – rather they were going to think harder and tighten the loose nuts in a military barracks! “Someone must have sensed that every saved coin can help make a difference in the life of a citizen tucked away somewhere in this country,” I thought to myself.

When we finally arrived, we went through the routine security checks, and later entered the modest meeting hall. The room was packed with excited but relaxed officials. The block had been given a facelift days ahead of the retreat, I later learned.

I was tempted to believe that perhaps the ninth retreat was likely to concentrate more on the incredible achievements the government had registered over the last few years, with declared commitments to stay the course and perhaps fix a few things here and there.

I thought that, coming just weeks after it had been announced that as many as a million Rwandans (12 per cent of the population) had jumped the poverty line and that the country had nearly achieved its targets under the Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EDPRS I), with a year to spare, as well as a general robust economic performance in a difficult year for many countries, including those in the region, it was only obvious that the mood was going to be celebratory.

A quick perusal through the ‘Concept Note’ that was distributed in the room showed that the organisers had sought to tie the retreat around the impressive national statistics as shown in the 2010 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) and the third Household Living Conditions Survey (EIV3), although there was an indication they were keen on entrenching progress at the grassroots, with the unprecedented participation of district mayors.

It did not take long before I realised I was wrong. When President Paul Kagame took to the floor, his guileless talk was almost reminiscent of the statements he made in the same gatherings before the launch of the EDPRS I (in 2008), which has since changed Rwanda in many aspects. He was as emphatic and demanding with a strong conviction that his government can bring about much more results.

His speech concentrated on areas the government had failed to meet the expectations (its own targets, I must add). Yet he did not attempt to fault particular individuals, rather presenting the unachieved targets as a collective failure, even blaming himself at one point, saying he should have done better to ensure the country adequately addressed its energy challenges.

Listening to his speech, you would be forgiven to think this was a country that had registered failure in the recent past – not one that had delivered a more than 8 per cent growth rate, against all odds, last year, and achieved food security levels. You would not believe this is a country that had kept up its reputation as a top global ‘Doing Business’ reformer, a ‘clean country’ on a continent ridden with corruption, and one whose judicial system has increasingly won international community’s confidence with regard to conducting fair and transparent trials, with more countries now willing to extradite or deport suspects to Kigali, to mention but a few.

The President hardly mentioned any of these glowing achievements, rather pushing his Cabinet and other officials to go extra mile, tap into every capacity and resource at their disposal, with a view of changing the living standards for the Rwandan people.

While I’ll not delve into the other proceedings that were held in camera (although I was lucky to follow some of them), the President’s speech and tone set a new mood and a renewed sense of urgency for the Ninth Leadership Retreat. Under Kagame, Rwandans will be rest assured of a truly hard-working government, one that has no time to celebrate achievements, rather using them as a motivation to constantly raise the bar.

The Minister of youth, Jean Philbert Nsengimana, has called on the youth to implement their projects in the urban centres so as to promote employment.

He made the call while addressing various youth cooperatives in Nyamirambo stadium. The meeting was aimed at giving new strategies for youth empowerment in the country in terms of creating jobs.

“Now that the youth are the country’s engine for development, it’s high time they established their business ventures within urban centres for the development of cities across the country,” said Nsengimana.

The minister added that the government was now switching from social cluster empowerment to the economic development strategies.

“Youth have potential to develop themselves other than waiting for support. You have to develop confidence in whatever you are planning to do,” he added.

Nsengimana said the only way to create a happy new generation is for the youth to become more patriotic and innovative in focusing more on creating business opportunities like starting up companies instead of waiting for handouts from benefactors.

He disclosed that his ministry had received several projects from the youth requesting for financial support worth Rwf 800 million yet the ministry only gets less than Rwf 100 million for youth empowerment.

According to the ministry, to financially support youth projects, the ministry needs over Rwf 10 billion.

Nicolas Muhamiriza remembers sitting atop a small hill as red rivers of molten lava crept over the city and swallowed his sprawling villa.

Muhamiriza, 47, was once the owner of a thriving bottling plant. Now he is among thousands of Congolese in the eastern city of Goma who struggle to pay rent for wooden shacks, their livelihoods destroyed nearly four years ago when lava submerged schools, hospitals and houses.

Scientists and officials fear Goma will one day be incinerated by Nyiragongo, the volcano that looms over the city. But Goma’s fertile soil and its location at the tip of Lake Kivu means people still swarm to its lively markets, for trading with nearby Uganda and Rwanda.

City officials would like to move Goma’s residents 30 miles west, to the towns of Sake and Kirotshe.

Few, however, can afford to leave, and the government doesn’t have the resources to help.

“If I had the money I would move tomorrow, but where would I go?” Caleb Kabanda asked. “Here, maybe I can find a job. Outside, it will be impossible.”

Kabanda, a 31-year-old former English teacher whose school was turned into cinders by the lava, said he got by on odd jobs now.

Some 500,000 people live in Goma, and the population will probably double in five years as more people move in despite the risks, Deputy Mayor Deo Katindi said.

“I believe that Goma will disappear from the map,” he said, sitting in an office about 200 yards from an expanse of black stones and ash where one stream of lava flowed through the city.

Katindi, who lost his house, car and all his belongings, sits on a planning committee that concluded last year that the best idea was to try to lure people away from Goma by investing in Sake and Kirotshe.

He said Goma had appealed for financial help from international organizations but had received nothing. As a result, no concrete steps have been taken toward moving.

Scientists say Nyiragongo is lively and a serious hazard.

Only Italy’s Mount Vesuvius is more dangerous in its threat to humans than Nyiragongo, which has erupted five times since 1902, said Celestin Kasereka, a volcanologist at Goma’s Volcano Observatory.

“We don’t know when the volcano will erupt,” Kasereka said. “But it could easily be worse than the last time.”

In Nyiragongo’s relatively small eruption on Jan. 18, 2002, nearly 80 percent of Goma’s economic activity was wiped out by flows of glowing lava that crept across the central markets.

Some 300,000 people fled the city, and nearly half of them lost their homes.

Most soon returned, possessing nothing more than the tattered clothes on their bodies.

Some in Goma, where the rotten smell of sulfur regularly wafts down from the volcano’s crater, believe that the next eruption may very well be their last.

“That smell is a warning,” said Pierre Muhindo, 46, father of three and a longtime security guard. “Stone after stone will fall on the earth, before we all go to heaven.”

THE suspected architect of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide begins a fourth week of testimony today, defying accusers in the biggest trial to date over the African nation’s 100 days of slaughter.

Prosecutors at the UN’s Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda say former army colonel Theoneste Bagosora, now 64, was in charge as troops and machete-wielding militiamen butchered some 800,000 people.

But from the stand, Bagosora has accused rebel-turned-president Paul Kagame of triggering the bloodshed, blamed the chief of UN peacekeepers for the murder of Rwanda’s prime minister and even denied genocide took place.

“I do not believe in the genocide theory. Most reasonable people concur that there were excessive massacres,” he said during testimony and cross-examining that has gone on since October 24. “They have labelled and continue to label me as the mastermind of the massacres. … The accusations that I led the killings are malicious.”

The court has so far indicted 81 people, convicted 22 and acquitted three.

A succession of hardline defendants from the majority Hutu ethnic group have expressed a mixture of irritation, anger and incomprehension at the notion that a genocide occurred in 1994.

Many say they believed they were defending Hutus against an onslaught by minority Tutsi rebels.

Bagosora argues the 1994 killings were not premeditated despite prosecution evidence weapons were given out in advance and militias trained to slaughter Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

The massacres began when President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down on April 6, killing him and sending the tiny country spiralling into three months of chaos.

Bagosora has accused now President Kagame of causing the massacres by shooting down the aircraft.

Mr Kagame’s rebels invaded from Uganda to end the massacres.

Before the killings broke out, Bagosora is accused of storming out of peace talks with Mr Kagame’s group in Tanzania and saying he was returning to Rwanda to “prepare the apocalypse.”

The most dramatic moment yet in these judicial proceedings came last year with testimony by Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, head of the UN forces during the genocide.

As Bagosora looked on, Gen Dallaire – who was so traumatised by his failure to halt the murders he later tried to kill himself – described him as the “kingpin” behind the genocide.

Bagosora, in turn, blamed Gen Dallaire for the death of Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, murdered a day after Mr Habyarimana. Ten Belgian soldiers guarding her were taken to a military base where Rwandan troops beat them to death.

Bagosora told the tribunal he had tried to save the men, but was rebuffed by “mutinous” soldiers.

He faces life in prison if convicted on 11 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda [ICTR] based in Arusha, Tanzania, has refuted a request by Omar Serushago who was chief of the Interahamwe [Rwanda Hutu militia] in Gisenyi Province [northwestern Rwanda] and Georges Ruggiu, an italo -Belgian who was a former presenter of Radio Libre de Milles Collines to be freed before serving their 12 to 15 year imprisonment term.

After pleading guilty of the role in the 1994, Omar Serushago who’s aged 44 was sentenced to serve 15 years in prison and Georges Ruggiu aged 48 to 12 years in prison.

Mr Serushago is accused of slaughtering four people during the genocide and ordered the killings of 33 others. He is being detained at the ICTR since 1998.

Mr Ruggiu, a former RTLM presenter who was arrested in 1997, is the only foreigner to be sentenced at the court and he is accused of inciting Rwandans to commit the genocide.