Commentary

ople rebuild their lives after the genocide. At the forefront of the Rwanda transformation is the current President, Paul Kagame. Kagame, a Tutsi, whose family fled to Uganda before the Rwandan genocide, commanded the rebel office that was instrumental in ending the genocide. He then served as Vice President and Defense Minister from 1994 until 2000, when he was elected president. Since assuming the presidency in 2000, Kagame is credited with restoring the political stability and turning around the economy of Rwanda. As President, Kagame has launched a number of programs aimed to transform the country into a middle-class nation by 2020. Based on economic indicators, Rwanda has improved in health care and education. Inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, has declined from 0.49 in 2011 to 0.437 in 2016 ³. By 2006, Rwanda’s GDP had caught up to its pre-genocide level, and from 2010 to 2019, the economy grew at an average annual rate of 7.16%. Over the last few years, Rwanda has consistently made it to the list of “fastest-growing economies in the world.” (Table 1). In 2016, Bloomberg’s Economist Intelligence Unit placed Rwanda at number eight in their list of top ten best economies.4 One of the major goals of the Kagame presidency has been to reduce poverty by investing in education, infrastructure, and foreign and domestic investment. A number of innovative programs initiated by the government have led to a reduction in the poverty rate and an increase in the country’s GDP. The Girinika program is a notable example. Launched in 2016, this government program provides every poor family in Rwanda with a milk cow. The goal of the program is to alleviate poverty, improve family nutrition, increase fertilizers for crops, and generate family income through the creation of small business opportunities from the sale of surplus milk. UMUGANDA

The last Saturday of the month in Rwanda is a national day of community service called Muganda. On Umuganda, everyone in the country is required to participate in some community service, including the President. The program has led to the building of schools, medical centers, and hydroelectric plants, the rehabilitation of wetlands, and the cleaning of Rwanda’s cities, towns, and villages—Kigali ranks as one of the cleanest cities in Africa. More importantly, Umuganda has been instrumental in healing the pains created by the genocide. It encapsulates the good that is now Rwanda.

Table 1: Rwanda Statistics _Source: Bloomberg The Gini coefficient measures the extent to which the distribution of income among individuals or households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution. A Gini index of zero represents perfect equality and 100, perfect inequality.