Paul Kagame's Impact On The Economic Development Of Rwanda

Historically Rwanda is known as a mainly agricultural economy, this is still true, but in recent years their economy has increased its manufacturing industry (Worldbank.org). Rwanda is located in East Africa, its neighboring countries are the Dominican Republic of Congo, Tanzania, and Uganda (Worldbank.org). The country is currently being run by President Paul Kagame, who is extremely interested in increasing the economic development of Rwanda (Worldbank.org). Presently Rwanda is categorized as a low-income country, but President Paul Kagame’s vision is for it to be a middle-income country by the year 2020 (Worldbank.org). The Gini coefficient for 2017 was 0.45, where the bottom decile held less than 3% of income and the top decile held approximately

Rwanda did not have its independence from Belgium until 1962, and that cause some of the higher-ranking population to flee to Uganda (UN.org). In 1988 a Civil war broke out between the Hutu people who were currently running Rwanda, and the Tutsi people returning from Uganda (UN.org). In 1993 the Arusha peace agreement was signed to stop the fighting, but its effects did not last long (UN.org). The President of Rwanda, who was being accompanied by the President of Burundi, died in a plane crash, this ignited a series of intense massacres (UN.org). Approximately 1 million people died in this massacre and more than 150,000 women were raped (UN.org). Following this massacre there were years of trials to try all of those suspected to be involved with the genocide (UN.org). These things have a noticeable impact on the life expectancy of the people in Rwanda. Following this tragedy, the life expectancy is on a continuous upward trend (Worldbank.org). In recent years, a large contributor to the increase in life expectancy is the decrease of diseases such as HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis (Minecofin.gov). The government has also focused funds on increasing the health care facilities and addressing shortages of trained personnel (Minecofin.gov). To summarize, the death caused by war decreased the life expectancy of the population, but in recent years the

In 2000, President Paul Kagame launched his plan for developing the economy called Vision 2020, it is comprised of the countries goals to be reached by the year 2020 (Minecofin.gov). One of these goals is to move from a low-income country to a middle-income country (Minecofin.gov). This goal requires a 7% increase to GDP every year between 2000 and 2020, on average they are showing closer to 8% growth per year (Worldbank.org). If their growth continues this way they should be able to reach their goal, if not by 2020, so thereafter. In looking at Rwanda’s GNI per capita, a clear increase can be seen from 2000 to 2016 (Worldbank.org). This means that their attempts to raise the incomes of the population are seemingly working. The increase in the late 1970s and early 1980s is not because of an increase to overall income, but rather a decrease to the amount of people it is being shared between (UN.org). Another one of the Vision 2020 goals is to decrease the number of people in poverty (Minecofin.gov). Large strides are being taken to decrease the frequency of poverty in the country, in the past few decades they have already been able to decrease the poverty rate significantly (Worldbank.org). In 2011 the poverty rate was at 44%, and by 2014 it had already dropped to 39% (Worldbank.org). Overall, the income per person is increasing and the poverty