Case Study

Rosine

Background
When Rosine Ntenzi completed her studies, she was keen to get a job so that she could help her parents to
pay school fees for her siblings who did not have the same opportunities that she had. She had graduated
with a degree in Human Resource Management, but without much experience, and few family connections,
finding a job turned out to be a difficult task. In the end, she applied for any vacancies that she came across,
but still she noticed that the jobs always went to those with better connections.
Six months later, after applying to over 50 companies, she was
beginning to lose hope. Luckily, a manager at a local tea factory
offered her a part-time job to deal with suppliers. Although this
is not where she pictured her career, she was grateful for the
opportunity and worked hard to prove that I deserved the job.

Making a difference

During her first week on the job, she noticed that 80% of the
employees were over the age of 40 and all the suppliers were
from large companies with regional or international operations. None of the suppliers were locally owned.
Having experienced first-hand the limited job opportunities for young people - especially women - she
vowed to do all she could to create opportunities for more local young people.

She went out of my way to encourage youth-owned businesses to bid for contracts at the Tea Factory. She
made a case to her manager, Emmanuel, to change the selection criteria – where suppliers previously had
to have been in operation for over 10 years to bid for contracts, she encouraged them to relax this criteria.
Rosine pointed out that this rule disadvantaged companies owned by young people and local, smaller
companies from the community. She also argued that younger companies are cheaper, more flexible, and
keen to impress and build loyalty- so they could give better services.

The manager agreed to give it a try for non-core services. She made sure that she advertised these con-
tracts in places where young people and local businesses could see them so that they could take advan-
tage of these opportunities. By the time she left the Tea Factory, 50% of the company’s suppliers were
owned by local young people – half of them women. Within her small role, she had made a difference.
Creating space for others to speak up and lead
Rosine has since moved to Rusha Restaurant, a medium-sized estab-
lishment located in Musanze. The restaurant offers catering services
to both its guests and external catering services for events.

Owing to her great project management skills, Rosine has recently

been promoted to a supervisor role in the catering department. She is
a great worker and gets along with everyone, which is why she was
promoted. She will be overseeing the recruitment of servers and
cooks and leading the preparation, delivery and service of food to
clients’ events.
Her role will involve managing the cooks, servers, dishwashers and the transport team during all events.
She’s excited about this new role but is feeling nervous about managing the people- especially since many
are older than her and have more experience, and therefore she’s not sure they’ll listen to her.

She’s determined to be a good leader who inspires her team to do their jobs instead of always being told
what to do. She values hard work and fairness and would like to ensure that the team always exceeds the
clients’ expectations. She is a strong believer in giving people chances to learn and grow.

She wants to create a team environment that’s more empowering for her team- where people can speak up
and share their concerns and ideas. She knows that this will help them build their confidence and lead.

Moreover, she wants to do a really good job to demonstrate that she’s earned this promotion. She plans to
do this by ensuring that she’s getting real results and people are seeing real change thanks to her leader-
ship. Things are also getting really busy in the hotel, so she wants her team to really ‘own’ their tasks but
she’s not sure how to help them do that.