Economic Development Is So Cool

My brain is very tired from working on my research project (details on that to come later), so I ask you to forgive me if this post is a little scattered.

This week we've been learning about Rwanda's economic development since the genocide, and it has been so interesting. I have been extremely grateful this week to be a global studies major and therefore have enough of a background to really understand and wrestle with what we've been seeing this week. I find this stuff absolutely fascinating, and if anyone in our group doubted that I am a total nerd, now they know, and I am totally ok with that.

After the genocide, Rwanda was absolutely devastated. The previous government had fled, leaving absolutely no money in the treasury, most professionals had either fled the country or been killed, and the country's infrastructure was almost completely destroyed. Today, Kigali has been completely rebuilt and infrastructures around the country have been restored and improved upon, with significantly more universities and hospitals than before the genocide. The government has adopted an ambitious development plan called Vision 2020, with the goal of extending benefits such as electricity, clean water, and easy access to healthcare etc. to even the most rural areas, and to bring Rwanda to the level of a middle income country by the year 2020. This is an extremely ambitious project, and the government is working very hard to make it happen. How are they funding this, you ask? That is the interesting part. While the country initially needed massive amounts of foreign aid to being rebuilding (since they literally started with $0), President Kagame wants the country to begin phasing out aid from foreign governments, which currently accounts for 50% of Rwanda's annual budget. He feels strongly that this is not a sustainable strategy, and he's right, because aid from other governments is renewed every year, and states are well within their rights to decide that they would rather spend that money on something other than supporting the Rwandan government. Instead, the strategy is to bring in foreign businesses and convince them to invest in Rwanda, with the idea that a company opening up a branch here has more of a vested interest in the country and is therefore more likely to stick around, and Kagame has done a truly impressive amount of international networking to make this happen. For example, he personally reached out to the CEO of Costco, which is now one of the biggest buyers of Rwandan coffee, and he has formed a circle of global businessmen who both bring their companies to Rwanda and enlist their friends as well. For this reason, as well as the encouragement of local business, Rwanda's economy has been growing rapidly, at a rate of around 8% for the last few years. Whether or not I agree with this capitalistic model and the idea that economic growth will eventually spread to benefit everyone and raise the income levels of the poor, the government is clearly doing something right. Seventeen years ago Rwanda could rightfully have been classified as a failed state, with the genocidal government having fled, infrastructure destroyed, and bodies were still in the streets. You cannot see that Rwanda today. It is still one of the poorest countries in the world, and that poverty is still evident in many ways, yet today Kigali is one of the most developed cities in the region, and the government is actively working to spread that development to the rest of the country. The amount of growth that has happened over so little time is stunning, and I am very curious to see where Rwanda will be in another 17 years.