Over 390 local leaders attended a hotel conference at Kibeho in Nyaruguru district, Southern Rwanda, as Southern Province Governor, Alphonse Munyantwali, on Friday made a one-day work visit to the district to assess the current pace towards achieving the 2012-2013 performance contracts.

The local leaders ranged from heads of�umudugudu�(literally village)���Rwanda�s smallest administrative unit � to executive secretaries of cells and sectors plus officials at the district level.

�Competence and commitment are key to achieving your performance contracts�, Governor Munyantwali told a keen, interactive audience of local leaders.

One of the local leaders in attendance is Peter Iyakaremye, head of Agatare village in Ngarurira cell of Munini sector, Nyaruguru district.

�This meeting is a testimony that the top leadership of our province cares for all the leaders even those like me at the very lowest administrative level. That gives me motivation and I feel more and more part of the team�, said Iyakaremye, speaking at the sidelines of the meeting.

Areas of Nyaruguru district�s performance contracts include agriculture, roads construction, trade, job creation especially among the youth, assisting vulnerable groups, electricity, clean water supply, grouped habitat and good governance.

According to Nyaruguru district�s Mayor, Fran�ois Habitegeko, the district has already met some of its targets in agriculture where thousands of hectares of maize, Irish potatoes, beans, cassava and wheat are being grown.

83 per cent of Nyaruguru district�s estimated 286,000 �population now live in a grouped habitat, according to Mayor Habitegeko, which the district hopes will help bring success in other areas like electricity and clean water supply.

And nearly eight months to the deadline of the 2012-2013 performance contracts, Governor Munyantwali sounds upbeat with regard to Nyaruguru district.

�It [the current state of performance contracts] gives me a good impression. Almost all the performance contracts are on [the right] track�, said Governor Munyantwali.

The Governor further promised to help the district overcome what seems to be its biggest challenge for the moment: a plot of land upon which to build a cross-border trade complex.

Last fall, in the 2011-2012 performance contracts� results, Nyaruguru came in the 26^th�position out of Rwanda�s 30 districts, scoring an average mark of slightly over 80 per cent. This was a relatively better stance than in the year before, 2010-2011, when the district ranked 29^th�countrywide with an average point of 75 per cent.

In the same 2011-2012 year of performance contracts, the Southern Province is reported to have emerged the first of Rwanda�s four provinces plus Kigali City. And with the Governor�s Friday visit to Nyaruguru district, which ranked the last of the southern province�s eight districts in the 2011-2012 performance contracts� results, it seems the province is interested in assisting even the apparently less performing districts to help maintain its grip on the first place even this year around.

Rwanda�s President Paul Kagame initiated the performance contracts in 2006, as a way of swifting the country�s development through acknowledging and rewarding best performing leaders, among others.