In less than eight months, Rwandans will head to voting sites during the presidential elections taking place in July 2024. The elections will be the last presidential term of seven years. Going forward, Rwanda’s presidential terms will go for five years, according to the constitutional reform made in 2015.
In 2017, Rwanda laid out a seven-year term of priorities and development projects that would lead Rwanda to become a middle-income country by 2030. The plans, known as the National Strategy for Transformation, were a succession of the Economic Development and Poverty Reduction (EDPRS 1 and 2) that ran from 2008 to 2018.
The strategies are frameworks for Rwanda’s transformation. The strategies underline Rwanda’s priorities to lift people out of poverty and increase their welfare. By 2022, Rwandans were the longest living population in Sub-Saharan Africa with 69 years of life expectancy.
After analyzing the current outgoing strategy, Hobe News outlines the top five successful development projects from the NST1 from which Rwandans have benefited the most in the past seven years.
Ejo Heza pension scheme
Ejo Heza was established in 2018 by the government to boost the saving culture in the government. In 2022, 1.5 million Rwandans had joined the scheme. Since mid-2019 when workers started embracing the saving culture, over Rwf 22 billion in funds have been saved.
Over 76 percent of the 1.46 million active subscribers of the scheme are in an informal sector whose jobs do not save for a pension.
The active subscribers include farmers, motorcyclists, and micro-business owners. Jacques Rutsinga, Business and Operations Team Leader said that the scheme gains new subscribers every day. Between early December and January 2, around 200,000 new people had subscribed.
The Ejo Heza saving scheme allows members to save any amount above Rwf1500 (approximately $1.45) at any time. After a year of active saving, members are allowed to use their funds as collateral to acquire loans or get paid in advance for education and other projects.
Savings are fully accessible once the members turn 55 years old and above. Any Rwandan or foreigner living in Rwanda above the age of 16 is eligible to join the scheme.
When the scheme was established in 2018, the goal was to raise Rwf8 billion in its second year and Rwf9 billion in the third year. The scheme targeted 200,000 people, active savers, in five years as expected in the National Strategy for Transformation (NST1).
Africa’s Tourism and MICE hub
Rwanda has slowly and steadily taken over countries like Kenya when it comes to hosting Conferences.
The landmark year was 2022 when up to 87 conferences were hosted in the country’s different MICE amenities, one of them being the Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting (CHOGM).
Besides Chogm, which was attended by 4,000 delegates, other big international events like the International Telecommunication Union General Assembly, the Mobile World Congress, the International Conference on public health, and the Africa Protected Areas Conference.
Last year, the country hosted 86 conferences that attracted 18,400 foreign delegates and generated up to $38.5 in revenues, but the government expects to far exceed these numbers this year, with growth even expected to be much higher in 2023.
In 2023, Rwanda was the first African country to hold the Move Africa festival by Global Citizen, an event that had been typically held in the US and Europe. In addition, Rwanda’s tourism package grows bigger by year, including the iconic Kwita Izina gorilla naming ceremony which attracted world stars like Kevin Hart and Idris Elba in 2023.
Tourism revenues rose by 171.3 percent from $164 million in 2021 to $445 million (about Rwf496 billion) recorded in 2022, according to the 2022 annual report by the Rwanda Development Board (RDB).
Rising service industry
In the National Strategy for Transformation (NST1) set to run until 2024, Rwanda came up with a structural shift oriented towards the export of high-value goods and services to grow exports by 17 percent and an average GDP growth of 9.1 percent.
The country aims to create 1.5 million decent and productive jobs (214,000 annually), and it is looking at the services and industrialization sectors for these jobs. However, the country is facing a shortfall of nearly 400,000 jobs to meet the targets outlined in the National Strategy for Transformation (NST1).
Teachers’ salary raise and school fees reforms
In August 2021, primary school teachers in Rwanda got an 88 percent pay rise. This is part of the country’s incentives aimed at improving teachers’ livelihoods. Under the new revisions, secondary school teachers will also see their pay increased by 40 percent.
2022 also saw Rwanda set school fees for primary and secondary public schools to a maximum of Rwf85,000 ($85) per term to make schools more affordable. This was almost a week to the beginning of the academic year starting September 26, 2022 as the government doubled efforts to contain school dropouts and increase completion rates.
The cap was expected to offer relief to parents under intense financial pressure as the cost of almost all the basic items in the country has gone up over the last six months.
Infrastructure
Investments in construction, real estate, and manufacturing sectors have led the path to economic recovery in Rwanda as the country sought to reverse the negative effect of the coronavirus pandemic.
The country recorded investments worth $3.7 billion in 2021 up from $1.3 billion in 2020. The sectors contributed up to 72 percent of all investments registered, with construction accounting for 31 percent, Real Estate 26 percent, and manufacturing (including agro-processing) contributing 15 percent, according to Rwanda Development Board (RDB) numbers released this week.
Among Rwanda’s mega infrastructure projects since 2017 include the BK Arena which has become an iconic host of continent events, the upcoming Amahoro Stadium that is expected to be completed in 2024, the Rusumo Hydropower plant that will cover the remaining part of Rwanda without electricity, as well as model villages scattered around the country.