ON THE MONEY
STUART THEOBALD: Rwanda’s radical economic transformation builds institutions, it does not destroy them
Rwanda is making large strides to transform itself from a poor agrarian economy into a knowledge-based, service-oriented economy with middle-income status by 2020
I spent last week in therapy. Or it felt like that, anyway. After a week of trauma as President Jacob Zuma recklessly destroyed years of building SA’s economic capacity, I found myself in a place that could not be more different: a place where policy is vigorously researched, planning is deep and implementation strongly monitored; a country that grew its economy an average 8% per year from 2001 to 2014 and more than 6% since. That country is Rwanda. I met entrepreneurs and policy makers during a research trip to assess what makes its economy tick. And it was impressive. Instead of trying to defend the importance of evidence-based research as the route to solving a country’s challenges, discussions were about the opportunities being made widely available for the private sector; about the importance of science, technology, engineering and mathematics education; about programmes to get young Rwandans into computer coding on a large scale so the next Google or Facebook might be born amo...
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