Nairobi — Rwanda next week commemorates 10 years since the 1994 genocide in which more than 800,000 people were killed in the space of 100 days.

The government will spend $7 million on the week-long festivities that will see several heads of state and government converge at Kigali from April 7.

Part of the money will be spent on renovating genocide memorial sites, which are spread throughout the country, and exhuming and reburying the remains of thousands of victims who were not given a decent burial.

As Rwanda marks the genocide week, it is important to note what has been achieved by the current leadership in the past decade.

When the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) took power, it found a shattered economy - poverty affected more than 70 per cent of the traumatised population, with widespread unemployment and insecurity.

The Interahamwe militia, which played a leading role in the genocide, had fled to the neighbouring Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) and taken up arms to fight the new government. Inside the country itself, soldiers of the deposed government tried to destabilise the state.

Industry and agricultural activity had ground to a halt, and all provisions had to come from Uganda or Burundi.

However, in the past 10 years, the country has made giant strides towards economic revival, which even critics of President Paul Kagame's government cannot ignore.

Growth rates averaging six per cent have been recorded, inflation kept under five per cent and the exchange rate brought under control. Tea output has increased and the privatisation process is described as a success.

A walk through Kigali, the capital city, shows the level of development of the infrastructure. New buildings, including residential houses that have been put up by the National Social Security Fund, are coming up, the roads are paved and the city is well lit at night.

Peace has returned to the nation of 8.2 million and thousands of troops that had been deployed to the Congo are back in the country. Some Interahamwe commanders have also given up their rebellion and returned to Kigali.

However, we urge the government in Kigali to use the celebrations to reflect on the challenges ahead. Among these are the high level of poverty, which currently stands at 60 per cent; the incidence of HIV/Aids, which is estimated at more than 13 per cent; unemployment; and the issue of returning refugees from neighbouring countries like Tanzania and Uganda.