Protais Musoni

Cabinet Minister
Focus Area(s)
Civil Service
Critical Tasks
Performance management system
Sequencing reform
Interviewers
David Hausman
Country of Reform
Rwanda
Town/City
Kigali
Place (Building/Street)
Office of the Cabinet Minister
Country
Rwanda
Date of Interview
Friday, March 12, 2010
Abstract

Protais Musoni, current Cabinet Minister, describes his experience in building institutions, first as deputy secretary-general of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, then governor of Kibungo province, and finally as Minister of Local Government for Rwanda. Musoni initiated a community-building exercise in which communes were invited together for seven-day workshops to discuss ethnic and class divisions, and then ten-member commune committees were elected, with representatives for each group. After Musoni pioneered the workshops in his province, they were implemented nationwide in 1996. The initial state-building efforts laid the groundwork for an ambitious program of decentralization that Musoni later oversaw.  In the first stage of decentralization, sectors and cells gained the right to elect representatives; administrative decentralization followed with a massive recruitment effort at the district level, counterbalanced by large-scale retrenchment at the central ministries.

Case Studies:  Shifting the Cabinet into High Gear: Agile Policymaking in Rwanda: 2008-2012, Improving Coordination and Prioritization: Streamlining Rwanda's National Leadership Retreat, 2008-2011Enhancing Capacity, Changing Behaviors: Rapid Results in Gashaki, Rwanda, 2008Rebuilding the Civil Service After War: Rwanda After the Genocide, 1998-2009Government Through Mobilization: Restoring Order After Rwanda's 1994 Genocide, and The Promise of Imihigo: Decentralized Service Delivery in Rwanda, 2006-2010

Full Interview

108 MB
Protais Musoni Interview
Profile

Mr. Musoni was Cabinet Minister in Rwanda. A Rwandan refugee, he worked in Uganda as a railroad engineer, then fled to Kenya in 1981, and joined Yoweri Museveni’s movement, which gained control of the Ugandan state in 1986.  He then helped to found the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) and was elected deputy secretary-general of the organization.  When the RPF successfully took control of Rwanda in 1994, ending the country’s genocide, Musoni was made governor of Kibungo province. He later served as Mayor of Kigali and Minister of Local Government for Rwanda before becoming Cabinet Minister in 2009. 

 

Keywords
Reform sequencing
performance management
capacity building
recruitment
decentralization
Not specified