African Arguments

Top Menu

  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
    • Climate crisis
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
    • Into Africa Podcast
    • Africa Science Focus Podcast
    • Think African Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

logo

African Arguments

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
    • Climate crisis
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • #EndSARS
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Podcast
    • Into Africa Podcast
    • Africa Science Focus Podcast
    • Think African Podcast
  • Debating Ideas
EconomyRwanda
Home›African Arguments›Economy›Rwanda’s economic plans have fallen short. The answer? Listen.

Rwanda’s economic plans have fallen short. The answer? Listen.

By Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza
February 25, 2022
719
2
Tea workers sort tea at the Kitabi Tea Processing Facility in Kitabi, Rwanda. Credit: A'Melody Lee / World Bank.

Low trust and lack of accountability are holding Rwanda back. Dialogue and opening up are in everyone’s interests.

Tea workers sort tea at the Kitabi Tea Processing Facility in Kitabi, Rwanda. Credit: A'Melody Lee / World Bank.

Tea workers sort tea at the Kitabi Tea Processing Facility in Kitabi, Rwanda. Credit: A’Melody Lee / World Bank.

In 2000, Rwanda embarked on a development programme aimed at transforming the nation to middle-income country driven by knowledge economy by 2020. Over the following two decades, Rwanda made notable progress for which it received international plaudits. Its economy grew the tenth-fastest in the world from 2001 to 2010. Its income per capita rose along with Rwanda’s position on the Human Development Index, while poverty levels seemed to decline significantly.

Not everything, however, was perfect. Inequality remained high, while independent studies questioned the veracity of Rwanda’s poverty statistics. Moreover, the high growth rates were driven by foreign aid rather than a vibrant private sector or trade. When donor countries suspended financial assistance in 2012 due to Rwanda’s alleged involvement in the conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, growth decelerated.

Several projects also fell short of expectations. From the early-2010s, for instance, the Rwandan government rapidly accumulated debt to upgrade the national airline and invest in large-scale infrastructure projects for developing the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) sector. These initiatives failed to generate their intended returns and fell even further behind when the Covid-19 pandemic struck.

The result of this today is that Rwanda is still yet to reach middle-income status and the deadline for this goal has been pushed back from 2020 to 2035. The country’s debt has reached 71% of GDP, most of it having been spent on big projects that did not address the immediate needs of the population. While the economy rebounded from the pandemic last year, the IMF has warned that “accelerating structural and economic reforms are needed to mitigate pandemic scars and ensure more inclusive and sustainable growth over the medium term”.

Despite the praise it received internationally, the pandemic exposed the shortcomings of Rwanda’s economic progress, especially in those sectors needed to achieve genuine social and economic transformation for the wider population.

According to the World Bank Human Capital Index 2020, for instance, a child born in Rwanda today will be 38% as productive when they grow up as they could be if they enjoyed high-quality education and healthcare. This figure is below average for sub-Saharan Africa and is driven by Rwanda’s poor education and high rates of malnutrition. These shortcomings are among the main reasons Rwanda struggles to attract private investment, which will be key for its economic development. The country is unlikely to be able to rely on continued borrowing, foreign grants or hiking taxes to drive investment.

Underlying these weaknesses is low societal trust, between citizens and between citizens and the state. This stems from both the legacy of the history that led to the 1994 genocide and Rwanda’s governance since. Many people lack confidence that there has been justice for all the atrocities committed, while human rights violations in the past decades have contributed to a distrust of the state. Rwanda has the fourth lowest reported happiness levels in the world.

This is compounded by the fact that citizens have little ability to hold their policymakers accountable. While Rwanda scores above the sub-Saharan African average for “control of corruption” and “government effectiveness” in the Worldwide Governance Indicators, it falls well below average for “voice and accountability”. Policies are typically implemented with little input from citizens and often lack sensitivity to the population’s wants and needs. This top-down approach not only means that people may be not satisfied with government policies, but the stifling of dissenting voices also means those policies are less likely to be effective and well-designed.

The lessons of history teach us that Rwanda is highly unlikely to transition to a modern and competitive middle-income country without developing highly capable and genuinely accountable institutions. This is not all that must change, of course. For instance, Rwanda’s development will have to be driven by trade and regional integration, yet instead of forging strong neighbourly links, Kigali has often allegedly been involved in regional insecurity and has increased political tensions with neighbouring states.

Nonetheless, domestic governance reform remains the single most vital aspect of putting Rwanda on the course it desires. The first step in this direction ought to be an intra-Rwandan dialogue between the government, political opposition parties, and civil society organisations in and outside the country.

Why dialogue? The history of Rwanda since independence has been characterised by successive regimes that have stayed in power by any means possible. The repercussions have been massacres and human rights violations, culminating in the 1994 genocide. To prevent history repeating itself, an intra Rwandan dialogue for governance reform is a necessity today. This small opening of discussion and inclusivity would help create an environment that could facilitate stability and the sustainable economic development in Rwanda and Great Lakes region that would be in everyone’s shared interests.


 

Previous Article

South Sudan needs elections. Here’s a clear ...

Next Article

How the Russia-Ukraine conflict could drive up ...

mm

Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza

Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza is a Rwandan politician and chairperson of Development And Liberty For All (DALFA)-Umurinzi, a political party that is yet to be recognised in Rwanda, with the focus to campaign for political space and sustainable development in Rwanda.

2 comments

  1. Gaspard Bigumanshaka 26 February, 2022 at 18:47

    This is a very good article. The self-serving leaders of Rwanda can lie about their domestic statistics, but they cannot manufacture macroeconomic statistics.

  2. Yves Rugunga 6 March, 2022 at 05:09

    Ingabire you are wrong. The inclusiness we have nowdays had never been observed in Rwanda. You forget or you avoid to show that we come from far. Your relatives conducted the business of this country and the GDP per capita was under 200$. The only project they have was to prepare the genocide of tutsi including you father who participated actively.

Leave a reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • Togo financial inclusion At a market in Lomé, Togo. Credit: Carsten ten Brink
    EconomyTogo

    Why Africa needs to make financial inclusion its 2022 priority

  • Three young men joke with each other to pass the time near the reception site in Assamaka, Niger, soon after being deported from Algeria. Because of COVID-19, all recently returned migrants are held here for a quarantine period of 14 days before being transported to Agadez. Credit: Mariama Diallo/MSF.
    AlgeriaNigerSociety

    “The guards had no compassion”: The migrants abandoned in Niger’s desert

  • Politics

    Wars do End: why conflict in Africa is falling – By Scott Straus

Subscribe to our newsletter

Click here to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter and never miss a thing!

  • 81.7K+
    Followers

Find us on Facebook

Interactive Elections Map

Keep up to date with all the African elections.

Recent Posts

  • The unaccountability of Liberia’s polluting miners
  • Africa Elections 2023: All the upcoming votes
  • “Poking the Leopard’s Anus”: Legal Spectacle and Queer Feminist Politics
  • Introducing Parselelo and a new climate focus
  • The ‘Hustler’ Fund: Kenya’s Approach to National Transformation

Editor’s Picks

Editor's PicksPoliticsUganda

“Give us back our people”: the Ugandans who disappeared

Senior officials claim not to know the whereabouts of individuals arrested nearly two years ago, as state abductions continue. On 23 August, Moses Bukenya got his freedom from Kitalya prison, ...
  • Nigeria’s official language is English. Why do its citizens have to prove it? 

    By Muhammed Akinyemi
    April 29, 2022
  • one day i will learn to speak my mother tongue

    One day I will learn to speak my mother tongue

    By Nyawira Githae
    June 8, 2022
  • The violent eviction of the Maasai community in Tanzania to create a game reserve recently drew widespread shock and condemnation. Credit: Dylan Conway.

    Fortress conservation is heading for a crisis that can’t come soon enough

    By Simon Counsell
    July 28, 2022
  • President Emmanuel Macron of France during his three-country tour in Africa. Credit: Présidence de la République du Bénin.

    Liberté, Egalité, Impunité

    By Billy Burton
    August 16, 2022

Brought to you by


Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licence
Articles on African Arguments are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
  • Cookies
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • en English
    am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu
© Copyright African Arguments 2020
By continuing to browse this site, you agree to our use of cookies.
en English
am Amharicar Arabicny Chichewazh-CN Chinese (Simplified)en Englishfr Frenchde Germanha Hausait Italianpt Portuguesest Sesothosn Shonaes Spanishsw Swahilixh Xhosayo Yorubazu Zulu