gui2de Travels to Rwanda for a Week of Partnership Meetings on Education Research and Data-Driven Governance
In late May, gui2de’s Executive Director Whitney Tate and affiliate researcher Andrew Zeitlin joined Rwanda Country Director Leodomir Mfura in Kigali for a series of meetings with Rwandan government partners to review current projects and explore new areas of collaboration.
Over five days, the team met with senior officials from the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC), the Ministry of ICT and Innovation (MINICT), the Higher Education Council, the National Examination and School Inspection Authority, and the Rwanda Social Security Board. As Tech Review Africa reported on the MINICT meeting, the visit centered on “how data and emerging technologies can enhance national planning processes, improve decision-making at all levels of government, and support more rigorous policy evaluation and impact assessment.”
gui2de has partnered with MINEDUC on several education initiatives and jointly convenes the Embedded Evidence Lab with the Ministry and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA). The Lab embeds staff directly within MINEDUC, the National Examination and School Inspection Authority (NESA), and the Rwanda Education Board (REB) to bridge the gap between research and policy — putting administrative data to work for better decisions and learning outcomes.
Through the Embedded Evidence Lab, gui2de and IPA have been implementing the Supporting Teacher Achievement in Rwandan Schools (STARS) since 2022, an initiative that tests how teachers’ performance contracts can be designed to improve learning outcomes. After three years of rigorous A/B testing and randomized controlled trial (RCT) implementation across 345 schools, 6,600 teachers, and 300,000 students, in the 2025/2026 school year, MINEDUC announced a policy to scale a version of the STARS contracts nationwide.
(Left to right): Andrew Zeitlin, Minister of Education Joseph Nsengimana, and Whitney Tate
In a meeting with Minister of Education Joseph Nsengimana, the gui2de team discussed the success of the STARS project — including the strengthening of the Comprehensive Assessment Management Information System (CAMIS) — as well as ongoing initiatives to further integrate Rwanda’s education management information systems and opportunities for additional research and analysis, including on teacher placement and retention. The gui2de team also demonstrated their teacher value-added dashboard, a first of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa.
At the Ministry of ICT, Minister of State Yves Iradukunda reflected on Rwanda’s broader ambitions as a data-driven economy, and outlined active initiatives MINICT is taking to further connect Rwanda’s rich data ecosystem, including the creation of a Data Hub and Data Exchange framework, digital service delivery, workforce skilling, and understanding the employment effects of technological change.
gui2de’s Andrew Zeitlin and Whitney Tate with members of Rwanda’s Ministry of ICT
At the Rwanda Social Security Board, the conversation turned to analytics work on the country’s long-term savings and mandatory pension schemes — and to how gui2de’s expertise in policy evaluation might support more testable, evidence-informed program design.
During the visit, gui2de also hosted a capacity-building training workshop on data management and analysis for Lab-embedded staff and the analyst team from MINEDUC’s Department of Policy and Planning, led by Head of Department Adia Umulisa, a former IPA and Lab team member.
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