Structure, Agency, and Multi-Perspectivity in a Rapidly Growing Economy
Rwanda is a developing country in the truest sense of the word. The country was destroyed in 1994 by the Rwandan genocide; their life expectancy that year was 28;[1] their economy shrunk to half its size;[2] up to about a million people were murdered. By 2000, their GDP per capita had grown 78%,[3] and their life expectancy had reached 49.[4] They didn’t simply quit in 2000—the government set new ambitious goals to reach by 2020. They wanted to be a middle-income country with a per capita income of $900.[5] They now are, with a per capita income of $2,210.[6] The government hoped for a life expectancy of 55.[7] Rwanda’s life expectancy is 68 (the highest year before the genocide was 52).[8] Their average economic growth rate since 2000 is staggeringly high at 7.3%,[9] compared to a US average growth rate over that period of 4%.[10] Since 1994, the poverty rate has fallen from 77% to 39%.[11] There has been non-economic improvement as well: in the 1980s, women could not hold subnational political offices; they could not open bank accounts; they could not join an organization that made profit and they could not even hold property.[12] Now the Rwandan parliament is 61% women, higher than every country on Earth. Any reader of these numbers would—and should—be delighted. But is this as much of a miracle as it looks?
The Economics
Is all this growth helping those who really need it, or is it just going to the top? One statistic that can help us to illuminate this question is the growth elasticity of poverty. This is the ratio between a percentage point of a growth and a percentage point of poverty rate reduction. In other words, a growth elasticity of poverty of -2.5 would mean that when an economy grows by 1% in a year, its poverty rate goes down 2.5%. If the economy grows 4%, the poverty rate drops 10%. Generally speaking, the average growth elasticity of poverty worldwide is around -2.5. In Rwanda between 1994 and 2000, the growth elasticity of poverty was -0.4.[13] For every 1% of growth, the poverty rate was only shrinking 0.4%; over six times worse than the cross-country average. Simply put, growth is not being allocated to where it needs to be. Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, houses 10% of the population, yet receives 69% of investment. The construction sector has received over $600 million of investment while agriculture has received under $100 million, yet agriculture employs over 70% of the population. Many lucrative government contracts that create some of this growth predictably go to companies owned by the military and the ruling party. [14] Even from the most macro level, the Gini coefficient (measure of equality of income where 1 is all income owned by one person and 0 is everybody made the same) has risen from .289 in the 80s to .51 now. That Gini coefficient is in the highest 15% of countries in the world.[15]
This lack of pro-poor allocation of growth is unfortunate no doubt, but this much growth is something to be very proud of, right? Not so fast. Aid to Rwanda has unquestionably been a factor. In 2004, Rwanda had aid to the tune of $53 received per person, 50% higher than the sub-Saharan average.[16] There is another less numerical fact not obvious to everyone: destructive events like war are actually quite good for growth, at least right after the war. The classic examples of this are Germany and Japan after WWII, who both grew rapidly, also with the help of aid. This skewed period of post-destruction growth can last several years, and the true question of long-term sustainability of growth may still be unanswered for Rwanda.
Even if the growth is inorganic and sustainable, at least it’s growth. Poverty rate reductions may not be as large as they could be, but the poverty rate is falling fast. This is all assuming we can trust the number the Rwandan government gives us, but can we? In 2014, the Rwandan government reported that the poverty rate had declined from 45% to 39%. Filip Reyntjens of the University of Antwerp decided to investigate this large reduction. What he found was that Rwanda had changed what they considered to be a typical ‘basket’ of food that a poor person would buy, replacing some low-calorie foods for high-calorie foods that the poor could buy but don’t. This small change in calculation methods effectively reduced the poverty line by 19%, helping to ensure the poverty rate reduction was large and impressive. In reality, the poverty rate actually increased that year if more consistent ‘baskets’ were used in the calculations. Food inflation was also severely understated, which is important because if inflation is understated, so is poverty (the money that you have can buy you less than the government says it can). Even the statistical pinnacle of neoliberal economic success, growth, is probably being overstated. This was discovered by noticing an increasing gap between the national consumption data done by a household survey and the national consumption data done by finding total consumption and dividing by the population. This gap either means that the growth is being captured by elites whose consumption isn’t evident in the household survey, or that the data is simply incorrect or made up, and the economy isn’t really growing that fast. The former theory is well supported by evidence discussed about poor allocation of growth and the latter theory is also well supported by the fact that crop yields were also probably inflated between 2006 and 2013.[17] To sum up the economics of the situation, Rwanda’s economic successes are misallocated, regressively distributed, and overstated.
The Shortcomings of Economics
The economics are shoddy at best. But economics aren’t the full story. Policies have real effects on real people and sometimes numbers are not the best way of getting those effects across. Having assessed neoliberalism in Rwanda by the numbers, one should also assess it not by the numbers. For this, we should look at a staple neoliberal policy: privatization of land. Rwanda has been on a mission (one encouraged by the World Bank) to massively increase agricultural productivity.[18] In less economic terms, both the Rwandan government and the World Bank want more food produced by less toil, an obviously noble goal on paper. This may not just be a noble goal, but an urgent one, with the world’s demand for food rising. In practice though, land is more than just a commodity. Land can be a social and cultural place that has many people’s livelihoods, both economic and emotional, wrapped up in it. Turning pieces of land informally used by communities into plots meant for profit can severely damage those who used the land before, even if their use was not formally registered. Furthermore, the rules given to these now-formalized pieces of land can deny communities agency by demanding that only certain market-oriented crops can be grown like maize, sugar, and rice.[19] Furthermore, all too often land privatization only helps to cement the position of the elite (foreign or local) at the expense of cementing the position of the poor.[20] Without paying attention to people’s social connections to their livelihoods, the “discourse of development” can sometimes be just that: a discourse.
Politics
One thing Rwanda has undeniably achieved is political stability, but at what cost? Once again, we see a difference between what is reported and the facts on the ground. Supposedly, Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s current president, won his re-election with 99% of the vote. While it’s impossible to know the ruling party’s true popularity, it is important that Rwandan democracy is a mere exercise. Political parties can be banned before elections[21] and their leaders are routinely charged with crimes preventing them from running or just imprisoned.[22] Where non-ruling parties have existed at all, they have served Kagame’s interests. In addition, the country has laws against “divisionism” and “genocide ideology” that have been used to suppress dissent not just among politicians, but among journalists.[23]
If so many democratic rights are being violated, why is the country still receiving so much foreign aid and assistance? History may be to blame for this. Before the 1990s, Rwanda had a strong authoritarian leader overseeing a period of relative prosperity and loved by international donors. Then, scarred by the fall of the Soviet Union, France began to push Rwanda in the direction of democratization, citing human rights and lack of democratic governance. France being one of Rwanda’s biggest donors, the former president of Rwanda announced that they would be attempting to democratize. This process led to destabilization and ethnic tension that has been argued to have culminated in the genocide of 1994.[24] Granted, this narrative has skipped some steps, but international donors’ memories might have as well.
Gender
The achievements in gender are also more complicated and unfortunately, more disappointing than meets the eye. As talked about in the introduction, the achievements made in legal rights for women have been astoundingly large, including rights to hold certain political offices, rights to own a bank account or property, and the right to enter into a business. These rights are something to be proud of, no doubt, but they do not imply gender equality, especially among the non-elite. Bank accounts and the ability to hold property are great, but they are rather meaningless to you if you don’t have any prospect of accumulating wealth. This reflects an “entryism” that states that if women are equally represented, they are equally treated.[25] There are way more women in parliament now, but these women are quite disproportionately Ugandan-raised, anglophone, and wealthy Tutsi women.[26] In actuality, they are not. Unwed women, for example, have little power.[27] They also have difficulty gaining access to contraceptives despite their greater availability because of cultural norms: asking one’s doctor for contraceptives as an unmarried woman is looked down upon.[28] Finding a husband then is essential, but that itself can be hard due to the sex ratio caused by the conflicts of the 90s (100 women for every 85 men).[29] Development initiatives like attempting to formalize businesses can also disproportionately affect women, as informal street vendors in Rwanda are predominantly female.[30] This limiting of the business activity of women denies them agency in what is already a difficult economy to make money in. Furthermore, it puts women in criminal trouble just for attempting to make an extra dollar in a way that is not supportive of “development” in the minds of the Rwandan government.
Media Coverage in Rwanda and the US
People are not separate from their positionality, and journalists are no exception. Journalists, though often hoping to stay neutral, can have assumption or biases that may spill out into the writing. The first of these assumptions is human rights. An article in The Economist addresses this directly, writing that the lack of political freedoms coupled with economic development fits a type of model: “that of an authoritarian who gets things done and helps the poor, even if he also tramples human rights.”[31] The concept of human rights is that everyone is entitled to them, no matter where they live. If a leader restricts these freedoms, he isn’t just stifling political freedoms, he is taking the humanity away from them by denying them these most basic facets of humanity. While not necessarily definitional, the phrase “human rights” can come with the expectation that there are countries who are capable of not “trampling” on them, namely the US and other Western nations. This obviously ignores the discourse around whether Western countries truly honor people’s human rights, given issues of freedom of speech in Western countries and whether it truly exists. Such examples can be found in Canada, where a comedian was fined for making hurtful jokes,[32] or France, where talk of criminalizing anti-Zionist viewpoints is ripe.[33] The connotation of human rights when applied to Africa is that the West has been able to recognize them; thus, whether rightly or wrongly, the West is held up as the standard to which other countries should model their countries. At the very least, human rights discourse in Africa implies that Africa cares what the West thinks—which you could argue is just to sustain an international donor base.
Some Rwandans are not ready to follow Western standards of governance. Extremely fast development is quite hard, one New Times (the foremost Rwandan newspaper) contributor argues. Having to adhere to Western creations and standards like a politicized cabinet, for example, will come at a cost to the rapid development Rwanda has been pushing for. The growth rate is among the highest in the world, and yet so much is yet to be done. Why should Rwandans risk impressive growth by purposely installing people they know will disagree with each other and slow down the execution of development policy? Maybe this would be an issue if the ruling party were massively corrupt, as is a problem for numerous states with essentially single-party rule, but Rwanda just isn’t very corrupt. Transparency International* consistently ranks them as being among the least corrupt countries in African and in the world, the author points out.[34] This may be a scary conclusion to come to, that what we think of as norms of governance can merely be thrown out on the grounds of efficiency, but the author is clearly right that extremely fast development is unbelievably challenging. An interesting piece of evidence for this lies in how fast countries have decreased their fertility (an indicator of development) from more than six children per woman to less than 3 children per woman. The UK and the US are developed, but this fertility transition took them 95 years and 70 years respectively.[35] Western norms of governance are clearly in line with development, but are they in line with very rapid development? Maybe not. Iran’s fertility transition from over six to under three took them 10 years (1986-1996), the fastest fertility transition in the world. They were ruled by two Supreme Leaders during this period. China, the second fastest transition, was also ruled by an authoritarian one-party state for its 11 year fertility transition, which happened even before the one-child policy.[36] Clearly, the New Times contributor has a point about Western norms of governance and their applicability to rapidly developing states.
In the article that led to the selection of this topic, a WSJ article entitled “Rwanda: A Poster Child for Development With a Dark Side,” there is an implicit assumption that is very hard to reckon with: the assumption that rapid development allocated towards the places and people that need it most is possible. It is useful to know how Rwanda can do better, both so that international forces can sway them that way, and just because knowledge is a valuable thing and it is journalists’ job to create it. That being said, the article asks a great deal of Rwanda. This is evident in a sectoral breakdown of investment flows. Rwanda invests more in construction than employment in the sector warrants—that is true. Also true is that Rwanda invests more in Kigali city than the population of the city warrants.[37] However, what the article doesn’t discuss is why this is. Construction builds things that are large and visible to all. A beautiful and thriving capital city also stands as a visible display of development and economic success. Rwanda over-invests in the visible more than they should from an economic and social analysis, undoubtedly. But is it possible this comes from an over-reliance on the visible from the outside world? Rwanda wants aid; might they be investing in the more visible because that’s how they get more aid? A contradiction emerges: if Rwanda were to use its aid on more invisible development, they might lose their aid altogether.
Another very visible example of development is the World Bank’s doing business report. Developing economies pride themselves on their ranking if it is good and international donors congratulate them if it is. The report basically measures how easy it is to do business, and it is an important report. Developing countries are often plagued with laborious hoops to jump through for businesses, forcing the existence of giant informal sectors. Most problematically, the government cannot extract money from these informal sectors, leaving very capital-weak states that cannot do the things most people think states should do, like provide a social safety net. An article in Rwanda’s New Times credits the reforms made by Rwanda’s Development Board for “revolutioniz[ing]” the Rwandan business environment on grounds of easy property registration, easy building permits, and the like. These reforms landed them the second ranked spot in Africa on how easy it is to do business, trailing only Mauritius. On the indicator for how easy it is get credit, Rwanda ranked second in the world, no doubt evidence of Rwanda’s massive growth and further potential.[38] What is not mentioned in this article is any nuance about the doing business index. None at all about any of the benefits in say, consumer safety, that come with regulation. There are also no mentions of important labor protections or other things that would lower a country’s doing business index, but might be socially valuable to the populace.
Zooming Back Out
Rwanda is economically developing quite fast. There is no question of this. That being said, it can do much more, and it should do much more to genuinely help the people in its country that need it. Rwanda may have great growth, but it does not seem to be going to the right places always. Their government is authoritarian, and unrepresentative of its people. Women are not being treated equally and money is not trickling down when it should. Rwanda is a neoliberal success story, but it also highlights the overarching problems of neoliberalism: poor allocation of new success. American media sometimes has immensely high expectations of them as if they are a 21st century America with never-ending capital sources; Rwandan media sometimes treats them as if they can do no wrong (obviously a history of media censorship plays a role in this). Economic development takes a century for some countries. Equitable, democratic development can take even longer. Rwanda is in year 25. The world impatiently awaits what Africa’s second fastest growing economy will do next not just economically but also socially, and politically.
Bibliography:
Non-African News Articles:
Axelrod, Jim, and Luisa Garcia. “Fighting Malnutrition in Rwanda with Orange Sweet Potatoes.” CBS News, November 22, 2018. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/researchers-fighting-malnutrition-in-rwanda-with-orange-sweet-potatoes/.
CNN, Aanu Adeoye, for. “Aide to Leading Rwandan Opposition Politician Found Dead.” CNN. Accessed November 14, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/11/africa/rwanda-opposition-leader-aide-killed-intl/index.html.
“Has Rwanda Been Fiddling Its Numbers?” The Economist, August 15, 2019. https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2019/08/15/has-rwanda-been-fiddling-its-numbers.
Steinhauser, Gabriele. “Rwanda: A Poster Child for Development With a Dark Side.” Wall Street Journal, November 6, 2018, sec. World. https://www.wsj.com/articles/rwanda-a-poster-child-for-development-with-a-dark-side-1541500201.
Rwandan News Articles:
Ruhumuliza, Gatete Nyiringabo. “Rwanda Isn’t a Gravy Train….” The New Times | Rwanda, July 25, 2019. https://www.newtimes.co.rw/opinions/rwanda-isnt-gravy-train.
“Rwanda Development Board’s Economic Reforms Revolutionize Rwanda Business Environment.” The New Times | Rwanda, May 27, 2016. https://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/read/200229.
Journal Articles:
Ansoms, An. “How Successful Is the Rwandan PSRP? Growth, Poverty, and Inequality.” Review of African Political Economy 34, no. 112 (June 2007): 371–79.
———. “Large-Scale Land Deals and Local Livelihoods in Rwanda: The Bitter Fruit of a New Agrarian Model.” African Studies Review 56, no. 3 (December 2013): 1–23.
Berry, Marie E. “When ‘Bright Futures’ Fade: Paradoxes of Women’s Empowerment in Rwanda.” Signs 41, no. 1 (Autumn 2015): 1–27.
Reyntjens, Filip. “Behind the Facade of Rwanda’s Elections.” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs 12, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2011): 64–69.
Silva-Leander, Sebastian. “On the Danger and Necessity of Democratisation: Trade-Offs between Short-Term Stability and Long-Term Peace in Post-Genocide Rwanda.” Third World Quarterly 29, no. 8 (2008): 1601–20.
Supporting Details:
Enos, Elysha. “Comedian Mike Ward Ordered to Pay $35K to Jérémy Gabriel | CBC News.” CBC, July 21, 2016. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/mike-ward-verdict-1.3688089.
“French President Plans Measures to Tackle Anti-Semitism.” Aljazeera, February 21, 2019. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/french-president-plans-measures-tackle-anti-semitism-190221062436715.html.
Roser, Max. “Fertility Can Decline Extremely Fast.” Our World in Data, May 20, 2016. https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-can-decline-extremely-fast.
The World Bank. “GDP (Current US$) - Rwanda | Data.” Accessed November 14, 2019. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=RW.
The World Bank. “GDP (Current US$) - United States | Data.” Accessed November 14, 2019. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=US.
The World Bank. “GDP per Capita, PPP (Current International $) - Rwanda | Data.” Accessed November 14, 2019. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=RW.
The World Bank. “Life Expectancy at Birth, Total (Years) - Rwanda | Data.” Accessed November 14, 2019. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?locations=RW.
The World Bank. “The World Bank in Middle Income Countries.” Accessed November 14, 2019. https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/mic/overview.
[1] “Life Expectancy at Birth, Total (Years) - Rwanda | Data,” The World Bank, accessed November 14, 2019, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?locations=RW.
[2] “GDP (Current US$) - Rwanda | Data,” The World Bank, accessed November 14, 2019, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=RW.
[3] “GDP per Capita, PPP (Current International $) - Rwanda | Data,” The World Bank, accessed November 14, 2019, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=RW.
[4] “Life Expectancy at Birth, Total (Years) - Rwanda | Data.”
[5] Marie E. Berry, “When ‘Bright Futures’ Fade: Paradoxes of Women’s Empowerment in Rwanda,” Signs 41, no. 1 (Autumn 2015): 1.
[6] “GDP per Capita, PPP (Current International $) - Rwanda | Data,”
“The World Bank in Middle Income Countries,” The World Bank, accessed November 14, 2019, https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/mic/overview.
[7] Berry, “When ‘Bright Futures’ Fade,” 1.
[8] “Life Expectancy at Birth, Total (Years) - Rwanda | Data.”
[9] Gabriele Steinhauser, “Rwanda: A Poster Child for Development With a Dark Side,” Wall Street Journal, November 6, 2018, sec. World, https://www.wsj.com/articles/rwanda-a-poster-child-for-development-with-a-dark-side-1541500201.
[10] “GDP (Current US$) - United States | Data,” The World Bank, accessed November 14, 2019, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=US.
[11] Steinhauser, “Rwanda.”
[12] Berry, “When ‘Bright Futures’ Fade,” 2.
[13] An Ansoms, “How Successful Is the Rwandan PSRP? Growth, Poverty, and Inequality,” Review of African Political Economy 34, no. 112 (June 2007): 373.
[14] Steinhauser, “Rwanda.”
[15] Berry, “When ‘Bright Futures’ Fade,” 7.
[16] Ansoms, “How Successful Is the Rwandan PSRP? Growth, Poverty, and Inequality,” 372.
[17] “Has Rwanda Been Fiddling Its Numbers?,” The Economist, August 15, 2019, https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2019/08/15/has-rwanda-been-fiddling-its-numbers.
[18] An Ansoms, “Large-Scale Land Deals and Local Livelihoods in Rwanda: The Bitter Fruit of a New Agrarian Model,” African Studies Review 56, no. 3 (December 2013): 3.
[19] Ibid, 6
[20] Ibid, 15
[21] Filip Reyntjens, “Behind the Facade of Rwanda’s Elections,” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs 12, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2011): 65.
[22] Aanu Adeoye, “Aide to Leading Rwandan Opposition Politician Found Dead,” CNN, accessed November 14, 2019, https://cnn.com/2019/03/11/africa/rwanda-opposition-leader-aide-killed-intl/index.html.
[23] Reyntjens, “Behind the Facade” 65-66
[24] Sebastian Silva-Leander, “On the Danger and Necessity of Democratisation: Trade-Offs between Short-Term Stability and Long-Term Peace in Post-Genocide Rwanda,” Third World Quarterly 29, no. 8 (2008): 1601-1603.
[25] Berry, “When ‘Bright Futures’ Fade,” 4.
[26] Ibid, 7.
[27] Ibid, 3.
[28] Ibid, 11.
[29] Ibid, 12.
[30] Ibid, 19.
[31] “Has Rwanda been fiddling its numbers?”
[32] Elysha Enos, “Comedian Mike Ward Ordered to Pay $35K to Jérémy Gabriel | CBC News,” CBC, July 21, 2016, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/mike-ward-verdict-1.3688089.
[33] “French President Plans Measures to Tackle Anti-Semitism,” Aljazeera, February 21, 2019, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/french-president-plans-measures-tackle-anti-semitism-190221062436715.html.
[34] Gatete Nyiringabo Ruhumuliza, “Rwanda Isn’t a Gravy Train…,” The New Times | Rwanda, July 25, 2019, https://www.newtimes.co.rw/opinions/rwanda-isnt-gravy-train.
[35] Max Roser, “Fertility Can Decline Extremely Fast,” Our World in Data, May 20, 2016, https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-can-decline-extremely-fast.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Steinhauser, “Rwanda.”
[38] “Rwanda Development Board’s Economic Reforms Revolutionize Rwanda Business Environment,” The New Times | Rwanda, May 27, 2016, https://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/read/200229.
*Transparency International measures perceived corruption in a country. Such a measure can bias downwards the true amount of corruption if people fear being honest about it, or if the people surveyed (“experts and businesspeople”) are themselves involved in the corruption. More details can be found at: https://www.transparency.org/cpi2018.