Education sector has received a boost after 154 teachers from Zimbabwe arrived to take up jobs in various learning institutions.

According to the plan, 135 will be deployed to teach in teachers at the University of Rwanda school of medicine, teachers training colleges and technical and vocational schools (TVETs).

The teachers, some of whom relocated with their families, came to Rwanda after passing job interviews. While welcoming the teachers to the country, Minister of State in charge of ICT and TVET in the Ministry of Education, Irere Claudette, said the country has high hopes in the teachers and counts on them to help turn around the education sector.

Ms Claudette told the teachers to pick interest in learning more about the country’s cultures and values which form the backbone on which many of the country’s homegrown solutions are built.

She added that besides the country benefiting from their professional experience as teachers, it also expects to benefit from their ability to mentor and train some Rwandan teachers who lack exposure and experience in the field.

Zimbabwean ambassador to Rwanda Charity Manyeruke said this is just one of the fruits of the good bilateral relations the two countries are enjoying.

“Zimbabwe and Rwanda enjoy good bilateral relations, in 2019 both countries opened embassies in the other’s countries, having Zimbabwean teachers come to work in Rwanda is just one of the fruits, we thank both our leaders for their far sightedness,”

She said in the past few decades Zimbabwe has been investing in its education sector, through policy reforms and building standards, which has produced results.

Zimbabwe has so far signed up to 22 collaboration agreements across different sectors such as energy, capacity building, trade and manufacturing.

Rwandan private sector has had several visits to Zimbabwe where they went to establish market linkages and identify trade and investment opportunities, and the same thing was done by Zimbabwean private sector in Rwanda.

The Zimbabwean teachers who relocated to Rwanda expressed excitement at the opportunity to work in Rwanda, a country they say they have been following with admiration because of the progress made in many sectors in just a few years.

For years the leadership in Rwanda has grappled with chronic underperformance in the education sector, having suffered a series of policy setbacks and poor leadership, which made it the Ministry with the highest turn over of ministers by far.

This has had far reaching consequences to the quality of education in the country, with analysts saying the country still has a long way to fix its education sector.