Focusing on a Sustainable Future: Development Reform in Rwanda

In 1994 Rwanda faced a mass genocide that wiped out one million people, approximately eleven percent of the population. In the wake of this crisis many skilled nationals fled the nation or were brutally murdered by the revolting Hutu Extremist. Even after the return of many of the nationals who fled the nation and billions of dollars in foreign aid and investment Rwanda still ranks among the top fifteen poorest nations in the world today. In order for Rwanda to lift themselves from poverty they need to:
 Concentrate on the education of their large youth population in order to develop more skilled workers in the nation and reduce the shortage
 Reduced the birthrate and population by empowering woman and educating them on sex practices to reduce the overpopulation
 Invest in electricity to promote more jobs and development into new industries and sectors

Educate the young and females in the population
Rwanda needs to focus their education on the young people and the females in the population to reach sustainable growth. Only 2.5% of the population is above the age of 65 and the median age is 18.6. Many of the young people in the population are illiterate since during the war and political unrest in the nation they could not attend school. Only 64.5% percent of women in Rwanda are literate.
 Nations whose women are disempowered less likely to develop. UN Deputy Secretary Asha Rose Migiro, research demonstrates that “Women’s empowerment is an essential means to achieving sustainable development, economic growth, and peace and security.” o Exhibit A demonstrates that woman who are uneducated are far more likely to have a death in a child under the age of 5.
 Rwanda should invest more money into their public education system so more youth can become educated and they can expand into other industries such as online service sectors that don’t require psychical transportation as Rwanda is land-locked and transportation costs are extremely high. o Rwanda relies heavily on agriculture especially the coffee industry which is sufficed by unskilled labor. The industry is cyclical and prices can have a large deviation. If the country wants to achieve sustainable growth they need to diversify. Exhibit B exemplifies the reliance on the coffee industry, showing that coffee constitutes almost all of Rwanda’s exports. o Rwanda is invested 90% in the agricultural industry and only 10% in the industry and service sector.
 Rwanda should educate the population about the Truth and Reconciliation Committee and other programs that seek to help the victims of the genocide reach some sort of closure so they can move forward with their lives. o Almost half the Rwandan children lost at least one parent and if children and others in the population cannot forgive it is hard to move forward and concentrate on re-building the economy

Reduce the birthrate
Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa, and due to the large population it is hard to achieve universal initiatives through the government since the infrastructure, lands, jobs, and systems in place are inadequate for such a large population.
 There are too many people to feed so it takes an extensive amount of foreign aid to feed the country adequately for even a day. o There is a production shortage to feed the whole population and 60% of the population lives below the poverty line. o It cost over one million dollars a day just to feed the refugees in camps across Rwanda, a country the size of Maryland.
 The poverty rate is higher due to over-population because people are forced to cultivate a small amount of land. o Ninety percent of the population is involved in agriculture and they do not make the returns they need to live comfortably since the land is divided among the whole population and the amount of land available for cultivating is extremely limited. o The entire country relies on the same industries so they are extremely vulnerable to changes in prices especially coffee, which recently declined in price and hurt the economy badly.
 Environmental degradation occurs since every inch of land is occupied other than a few Rwandan national forests. People need the land to make their living on agriculture. Rwanda should delve into more industries so that they are not as reliant on the land. They can get more production by allowing for the efficient farmers to stay in agriculture and get more land to cultivate and the less efficient farmers to transfer into other industries.
 They could achieve a reduction in birth rate through the education of women. Refer to Exhibit B, woman who are educated are much likelier to use contraception’s to control pregnancy than those who are not educated. Contraception is an important way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases which inhibit development as well. Rwanda has a 2.5% HIV/AIDS prevalence rate, the twenty0fith highest in the world.

Invest in Electricity
Less than 2% of households in Rwanda have electricity and only few businesses. In order to enable Rwanda to expand away from agriculture and diversify into other industries they need to make electricity more prevalent and affordable.
 Rwanda can open the economy to allow other companies compete to provide electricity to Rwanda. Electrogaz has a monopoly over the production of electricity and charges high prices to those who use it.
 They should invest some money into Research and Development to find ways they can innovate to provide cheaper electricity to the people, and rely less on generators.
 Only 2.7% of the population has access to the internet. If they can improve electricity it can create an initiative to also expand internet usage which can help promote jobs away from agriculture

Conclusion: Rwanda needs to make vast structural and cultural improvements to achieve sustainable growth
Rwanda is too invested into one industry in the county, agriculture. The population does not have incentives to attend school since agriculture is a low-skilled occupation and the county does not have jobs of a high skill level. In order to begin moving away from agriculture Rwanda needs to invest in electricity so they can modernize their country and promote other service industries that do not have export costs. They also need to empower their women in order to reduce the birth rate and prevent additional overpopulation.

EXHIBIT A

(UN DEVLOPMENT STATISTICS, MDG BROCHURE)

EXHIBT B

EXHIBIT C (UN DEVLOPMENT STATISTICS, MDG BROCHURE)

WORKS CITED

unstats.un.org/.../MDG%20Report%202010%20-%20Gender%20Brochure%20En.pdf

http://rwandinfo.com/eng/rwanda-un-deputy-secretary-general-asha-rose-migiro- addresses-the-international-forum-on-role-of-leadership-in-promoting-gender-equality/ http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTAFRREGTOPGENDER/Resources/rwanda.pdf