Dr. Usta Kaitesi, CEO of the Rwanda Goverance Board, on the role law reforms have played in the promotion of gender equality

The Long Form with Sanny Ntayombya

For 4 days, from between 17- 20 July, Rwanda’s capital will welcome thousands of guests from around the world who’ve come to attend the Women Deliver 2023 Conference. With its slogan ‘Where the world comes together to advance Gender Equality’ the Women Deliver conference will host the great and the good of the global gender equality movement.

Choosing Rwanda as the host nation was, in my opinion, an easy decision. Not only did it have the capacity to host the event due to its investment in the MICE industry, the country itself was at the forefront of the gender equality conversation.

Rwanda’s leadership made the strategic decision to turn its back on its misogynistic past and place equal rights for all its citizens, regardless of sex, at the heart of its governance model. Because of that decision, today women are at the forefront of everything that is Rwanda. They are in the security services, they are in the halls of parliament and they are well represented in the private sector.

The success that Rwanda is enjoying in the journey towards gender equality is not a fluke. It all started with overturning laws that were discriminatory and replacing them with better ones.

To help us understand just where Rwanda came from, legally speaking, to where it is today when it comes to the legal protections that women enjoy, I am joined by Dr Usta Kaitesi.

A PhD in law, Dr. Usta is the CEO of the Rwanda Goverance Board and a commissioner in the Rwanda Law Reform Commission. She was formerly a law professor in the National University.

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