Rwanda is striving to become a lower middle-income country by 2020. This objective is pursued in Vision 2020, and in more operational terms in EDPRS2. Amongst other interventions, strengthening the private sector is supposed to contribute significantly to reaching this overall goal. Capacity building is one of the key challenges of private sector development, and so far no vocational business training centre exists.
RICEM is going to close the gap between the vocational technical trainings, which are already in place, and higher commercial education provided by universities.
Though several training activities are ongoing for the management of cooperatives, for entrepreneurship, or for microfinance, these activities are not systemized and do not gear into each other. RICEM is going to harmonize these activities. Trainees and training providers are going to be brought together on one central platform, which is RICEM.
RICEM is a project under MINICOM. It is strongly supported by partner organizations from the public and private sector in Rwanda. The project is also supported by the German Cooperation.