RAUW Member Profiles

Ambassador Joy Mukanyange
2006-2008 President, Rwanda Association of University Women,
Director, DPL Communication, Rwanda

By Edward Guthmann

In the early years following the genocide, Ambassador Joy Mukanyange saw first-hand the reputation Rwanda had suffered in Africa and around the world. “It was a very difficult period,” Mukanyange says. “Very few people were willing to take Rwanda seriously. “So, I had to do a lot of political work to explain the situations, to actually assert Rwanda’s sovereignty. I had to assert Rwanda’s image as a country and a government able to face these problems and deal with them.”

Mukanyange, the inaugural president of RAUW, was Rwanda’s ambassador to Tanzania from 1996 to 1999, and ambassador to Kenya for the following three years. For nine years prior to the genocide she lived in the Netherlands working for an agricultural and development organization.

She returned to the country in July 1994. During her ambassadorship to Tanzania, she says, “the effects of genocide were still there – a lot. We had something like half a million refugees in a refugee camp in Tanzania, just 15 kilometers from the border with Rwanda. And these were unusual refugees. They were armed; they were violent for a long time. “So we had to deal with the refugees and the implications. Later on, I had to deal with their repatriation. The International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda had just been set up and I had to deal with the issues of justice.”

Mukanyange, who was born in Rwanda in 1951, spoke at the Kigali home of RAUW founder Shirley Randell. The ambassador has a measured, reserved quality, doubtlessly honed during her years of diplomatic service. She’s currently developing her own communications company.

Ambassador Mukanyange has three children: a son, 22, who is studying in the United States; and two daughters, Alice, 21, who is taking a course in tourism in Kigali, and Faith, 20, a student at Makerere University in Uganda. Mukanyange lost her father, a minister with the Anglican Church, in 1960. In 1964 she, her mother and siblings went to Uganda with the help of Anglican missionaries based in Burundi. Instead of living in a refugee camp, like so many Rwandese exiles, her family was resettled in a mission in the center of Uganda, where Rwandese were few and far between. “My mother was a very strong woman. I didn’t recognize that at the time, but in hindsight I know it. We were taught from a long time ago that only the best would be expected from us. There was really no question of us not going to school.”

Later, Mukanyange studied literature and philosophy at Makerere University. During her tenure as president of RAUW – she was elected in 2006 -- she has made education for girls a top priority. Luckily for the current generation of Rwandese girls, she says, the opportunities are vastly superior than they were during Mukanyange’s childhood. “The change has been enormous. I will give you an example. My elder sister must have been one of the brightest students when we were growing up. But all she could get as an education was teacher training for primary school. There’s nothing wrong with being a teacher as a career, but that’s all that was available for her at that time. And even then, she wasn’t even able to use that, because the moment she got married she wasn’t allowed to work.”

Of course, it takes time to change mindsets and structures of thinking. “Women are still very far behind in education and there are still problems,” Mukanyange says. “At primary school, I think, the enrollment rate is equal and sometimes girls surpass boys. By the time it gets to secondary school, the percentage of girls drops to 40 percent. And by the time it gets to higher institutions of learning, it’s below 10 percent.”

Social pressures contribute to the imbalance. “When girls get pregnant they drop out of school. When parents have only limited funds, they’d rather send their boys to school than the girls.” The best schools are still boys’ schools, Mukanyange says. “Even the best girls’ schools don’t teach science. The best university scholarships are given to science students, which keeps reducing the number of girls. It’s going to take some time and determination to actually change.”

And yet, Ambassador Mukanyange sees progress, and hopes to encourage the tide of social change through RAUW programs. “In RAUW we have a project we would like to carry out with Kigali Institute of Science and Technology, which is to encourage girls to take science and technology subjects. “We want to run career fairs so students can see all the possibilities. We also have developed a little career guidance book for girls. We don’t limit ourselves to education, but also deal with other human-rights issues and gender-equality issues because they are interlinked.”

Providing role models for girls is especially important. When Mukanyange was a child, there were no women in leadership positions in Rwanda. Today the Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Information and Minister of Infrastructure are all women. “It has always been a principle, a philosophy of the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front), which is the ruling party right now, that you cannot ignore the role of women. Women have been very active in the liberation of the country.”

Under the leadership of President Paul Kagame, she says, “The foundation has been put in place to really ensure women’s empowerment. President Kagame is really an exception among male leaders because he believes in the role of women intrinsically. “I think it’s something that he believes in himself. And that’s why I keep saying that the women of Rwanda, right now, cannot complain about anything. If we do not get everything we want, it will be our fault because the Constitution gives all the necessary foundation for that. The leadership is very committed to women’s empowerment.”