RICEM offers capacity building services for cooperatives, SMEs, and microfinance institutions in Rwanda

The Rwanda Institute of Cooperatives, Entrepreneurs and Microfinance (RICEM), is a specialized vocational institution under the ownership of Association of Microfinance Institutions of Rwanda (AMIR) and the National Cooperative Confederation of Rwanda (NCCR). The institute’s work focuses on providing capacity building services along with other business advisory services to cooperatives, small- and medium-enterprises (SMEs), and microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Rwanda in the form of training, skills transfer, consultancy, and research.

RICEM’s offerings for each sector are as follows:

Cooperatives
Cooperatives in Rwanda have a huge role in promoting inclusive, sustainable development and economic transformation of the country. The cooperative sector are a unique form of a self-help group that involves pooling members’ resources to realize economies of scope and scale. However, cooperatives face several challenges such as limited information and awareness of existing policies, laws, regulations, and internal rules among several others. RICEM as a specialized vocational institution offers different modules to address the challenges faced by cooperatives such as effective governance, effective leadership and cooperative management among others. Click here to learn more.

SMEs

The state of entrepreneurship has greatly improved in Rwanda with reform campaigns and policies that address business regulations. These have transformed the private sector and made it easier to do business and promote the entrepreneurship sector. However, the entrepreneurship sector still faces several challenges that hinder its players from turning their business ideas into sustainable high-growth businesses that would drive Rwanda towards its vision for growth such as business laws and regulations, business management, business planning among others. Click here to learn more about the specific modules RICEM offers to address these challenges.

MFIs
RICEM is aware of the critical role the microfinance sector plays in providing financial services in Rwanda. The landscape of the microfinance market over the course of time has changed greatly, and institutions in the sector are becoming increasingly more formal. They have been driven towards focusing on improving efficiency by retaining clients and identifying new clients interested in the financial services offered. Technological advancements have induced new modern ways of offering services which are quicker and more efficient. RICEM provides specific modules to support the development of microfinance such as effective governance for MFIs, effective leadership for MFIs and strategic management for MFIs among others. Click on the here to learn more about RICEM’s approach towards addressing challenges faced by the Microfinance sector.

RICEM has facilities that can conduct 8 training programs at a time including those conducted online, and each facility can accommodate from 25-35 participants given the current situation, but in case of normal situations, training facilities can accommodate 50 to 70 participants according to training standards. RICEM short term training programs can last for 3-5 days/week and long term training programs can last up to a year. RICEM has served over 526 participants from 219 non-financial cooperatives, 255 participants from 35 MFIs/SACCOS and 1409 participants from SMEs since the start of 2020.

For more information, please contact: +250783551066 or info@ricem.rw