This last Sunday President Paul Kagame (PK) addressed the Unity Club, a club composed of current and recently previous high ranking leaders in Rwanda. Simply summarized, PK urged leaders to make a choice to move their country into a prosperous future or remain imprisoned and entrapped into the sins of their past. The more than hour address-cum conversational speech, PK looked a not so happy man and the impression one got was that his fellow leaders were not up to the task. It looked and sounded like the man really has no team to support him move his country to the target 2020 vision they have set.

When watching and listening to him, one wondered why he had such a (poor) crop of people in the form leaders.

First of all, Rwanda, with its size, resources, history and ambitions does not need such a big beaurocracy. PK's ambitious vision for Rwanda would better be served with a tight, focused, and nationalistic but capable cabinet.

The type of cabinet that would serve Rwanda and PK better should in my view be composed of: Defense, Foreign affairs, Education, Trade, Economic Planning and Finance, Infrastructure and Communication, with the recently created Office of Cabinet Affairs. These are the key strategic ministries which if well supported, can deliver on all the dreams PK has for his country.

Other services like local governance, agriculture, land, labour, etc, can be handled by the existing relevant agencies. But there should not be any more than the above named ministries.

The question of appointing who in which ministry would be up to PK, but he should do away with the "ethnic", country of former refugeehood, clanical connections, and other such non-delivering factors that characterize and influence his (current) appointments.

Short of taking the above advice into consideration, he will enter his second term of presidency (if he contests and wins) a very frustrated man, giving similar speeches like the one he gave to the Unity Club last sunday.

Rumanzi, Kigali