Curriculum
True economic empowerment will come from an education that is a direct response to the needs of the private sector.This is critical to ensure that our students are gaining knowledge and skills that are applicable in the workforce.
Before we made any decisions about the Akilah curriculum and training focus, we listened to key players in the private sector. Our leadership and advisers interviewed business leaders and officials from the Private Sector Federation, the Rwanda Development Board, the Workforce Development Authority, the Ministry of Education, and others in order to understand the current gaps between the education system and the private sector.
Through our joint research and extensive experience in Rwanda, we discovered some surprising things:
• Rwanda’s hospitality industry is the fastest growing sector of the economy. The number of tourists visiting Rwanda increased by 54% in 2008, according to the Rwanda Office for Tourism and National Parks (ORTPN), and nearly 1 million tourists visited the country in 2009. The Rwandan hospitality industry brought in an estimated $214 million in 2008, making it the number one foreign exchange earner. The government projects that the tourism industry will be generating 5.6 percent of GDP by 2012.
• In 2009, the Rwandan government conducted a national skills audit report to assess the available human capital and the needs of each sector of the economy. The current human capacity in the hospitality industry is at less than 30% of what is needed. In the technician cadres (supervisors, assistant chefs, etc.), the current capacity is less than 4%.
• The Rwandan government estimates that at least 5,000 to 6,000 people must be trained per year in the Hospitality and Tourism sector to keep up with the present economic growth and demand.
• Currently, businesses are hiring people from Uganda and Kenya because Rwanda doesn’t have the education system to train people in these skills.
The Akilah Diploma programs will provide young women with the skills to pursue a career in the hospitality and tourism industries. Private sector leaders and the Rwandan government have repeatedly emphasized that this is an area of the economy that is desperately lacking trained professionals.
Akilah graduates will have the skills and training to move directly into the workforce.
Akilah will integrate the values and ethical training of traditional Rwandan education with the academic standards, critical-reasoning skills and discipline of Western scholasticism within a curriculum focused on technical career development.
The Akilah Institute will have the unique, and indeed parallel, objectives of equipping young women with the necessary skills to flourish in the Rwandan and global economies while imbuing them with an appreciation of their traditional values, thus promoting responsible citizenship and a willingness to give back to their community.