Tempus
|
Tidskriften
|
tidigare veckor: |
THE conference room resembles an old
Star Trek set, with swivel chairs, laptops on desks
and headsets that switch between Kinyarwanda and other tongues.
Paul Kagame, Rwandas president, sits in the captains
chair. His technocratic ministers sit nearby. When the talk turns
to business, Mr Kagame becomes animated. It is his passionhe
says he reads business case studies in bed. He wants to turn Rwanda
into the Singapore of central Africa. He is nothing if not ambitious.
Rwanda is best known for the genocide that claimed at least 500,000
lives in 1994. It has been peaceful since then, but lacks nearly
all of Singapores advantages. Singapore has the worlds
busiest port; Rwanda is landlocked. Singapore has one of the worlds
best-educated populations; Rwandas middle class was butchered
in 1994. Singapore is a gateway to China; Rwandas neighbours
are less than ideal, as a recent report from the Legatum
Institute, a British think-tank, put it. Uganda is corrupt; Burundi
a basket-case; Congo worse.
Yet Rwanda has one huge advantage: the rule of law. No African
country has done more to curb corruption. Ministers have been
jailed for it. Transparency International, a watchdog, reckons
Rwanda is less graft-ridden than Greece or Italy (though companies
owned by the ruling party play an outsized role in the economy).
I have never paid a bribe and I dont know anyone who
has had to pay a bribe, says Josh Ruxin, one of the owners
of Heaven, a restaurant in Kigali, the capital.
The country is blessedly free of red tape, too. It ranks 45th
in the World Banks index of the ease of doing business,
above any African nation bar South Africa and Mauritius. Registering
a firm takes three days and is dirt cheap. Property rights are
strengthening, as wellthe government is giving peasants
formal title to their land.
The startling improvement in Rwandas business climate is
largely thanks to Mr Kagame. Rwandas president is a controversial
figure. A tough-as-Kevlar bush fighter, he stopped the genocide
and chased the militias who carried it out into neighbouring Congo.
His forces killed huge numbers of people. His enemies are terrified
of him. The elections he holds are a sham.
On the plus side, he has overseen dramatic improvements of Rwandas
institutions. He understands that his country may collapse again
if it does not grow richer, and he is determined to make it easier
for businesses to operate. The average income has more than doubled
since 1994.
Investors are impressed. Visa, for example, is busy linking Rwandan
shops and cash machines to its global network. It picked Rwanda
out of dozens of countries as a test ground for bringing electronic
payments to frontier economies. (It also woos gorilla-watching
tourists.) Elizabeth Buse, Visas president for Asia, central
Europe and Africa, says Rwanda is a very easy place for
a global firm to operate.
Companies still face immense hurdles, however. Skilled labour
is scarce. Only 5.7% of the domestic workforce have a tertiary
qualification. An agri-businessman says that he can trust only
one of his employees with complicated duties. Most domestically
educated Rwandans have never learned how to think independently
and critically, says the Legatum Institute. Many Rwandan
businesses do not even grasp the idea of bulk discounts, and tend
to charge premia for larger orders. Rwandans admit they
are not good at wheeling and dealing. The countryside is largely
empty of the small businesses like battery recharging, second-hand
clothes and cafés which light up villages even in Congo.
The government has done some brave and sensible things to ease
the skills shortage. It recruits Western-educated members of the
diaspora. It has opened up the labour market to immigrants from
Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. About 7,000 Kenyans in Rwanda
have set up transport, farming and construction firms.
Taxes are another headache. Most Rwandans are too poor to pay
anything, so the top 200 taxpayers shoulder 75% of the burden.
VAT is payable on invoice, not on receipt of payment, which creates
terrible cashflow problems for small firms. Enforcement is strict:
paying a day late can mean the bill is doubled. The finance ministry
is mulling a lower flat tax.
Domestic infrastructure is shoddy. The electricity supply is meagre
and expensive. Outside Kigali, naked flames often provide the
only artificial light. The government aims to increase power capacity
tenfold by 2017. Transport is tough, too. Rwanda wants to be a
regional trade hub, linking all the areas where Kinyarwanda is
spoken (see map). But reaching a port is an ordeal. A government
study found that it takes a lorry four days and $864 in bribes
to make it from Mombasa to Kigali. It must stop at 36 roadblocks
and ten weighbridges, many of them manned by thieves in uniform.
Still, the Legatum Institute argues that Rwanda shows that the
rule of law can take root in Africa. Heres hoping.