Over the last decade Rwanda has made incredible strides economically.
According to the CIA World Factbook the country has nearly quadrupled per capita GDP since the mid-nineties, putting it within range to meet President Kagame’s goal of “increasing gross domestic product by seven times over a generation”.
However, sustaining this growth will not be achievable without a larger portion of Rwandan’s entering the private sector as entrepreneurs.
In order to meet these prodigious goals Rwanda must further embrace and develop an entrepreneurial culture. Here are some reasons why entrepreneurship is important to Rwanda:
Entrepreneurs are Job Creators
One of the most powerful ways in which entrepreneurs impact an economy is by creating jobs. Increasing the amount of money coming into the economy is important, but hiring employees and paying fair wages is an even stronger indicator that an entrepreneur is benefitting the local community.
These jobs help to elevate the lives of other’s within the country as well as redistributing money throughout the marketplace instead of allowing it to accumulate at one point. Serge Ndekwe is a prime example of the way in which entrepreneurs can impact the lives of their employees.
Serge has held a number of different jobs over the years ranging from taxi driver and public phone operator to working for INGOs.
Unfortunately Serge was fired twice for “little reasons that seemed to be unfair”. After being fired for the second time, he decided “I would never work for another person again”.
Since then he has managed to build a number of successful businesses including Papyrus restaurant and Masaka Farms. Serge’s decision to become his own boss has allowed him to do more than provide his own livelihood.
He now employs eighty-five people through his businesses, many of them vulnerable women, helping them to provide for their families as well.
Entrepreneurs are Problem-solvers
Many people believe that an entrepreneur must first find capital or be given a great idea before starting an enterprise.
This is not the case; instead entrepreneurs must be able to identify a problem and seek solutions for that issue. This helps to ensure that innovation and adaptability are a part of a nation’s skillset.
As a college student Meilleur Murindabigwi noticed that there were two major issues with much of the media Rwanda had received.
The majority of articles took a negative slant on life in Rwanda and much of it was written by people living outside of the country. Together with a group of friends Meilleur set out to provide quality coverage of Rwandan news events by in-country correspondents.
Meilleur and his partners also decided to launch their media platform on the web instead of via print because of the push towards stronger ICT connections by the government at the time. Since 2008 the team has seen IGIHE.com grow from a site receiving thirty views a day to well over seventy-thousand.
Meilleur and the IGIHE team have not allowed their success to stop them from looking for other problems to solve either. They noticed a need for someone to provide web design for companies looking to keep their edge technologically by developing a web-site. So IGIHE has also branched into the web services field in order to solve this problem.
President Kagame has said that “Rwandans would create their own strategic vision”, and Meilleur and the IGIHE team have done just that, helping to strengthen Rwanda’s economy and its perception on the world stage as well. Rwanda faces a number of challenges in the future and entrepreneurs will find innovative solutions for them.
Rwanda’s Entrepreneurial Outlook
Fortunately Rwanda is strongly positioned to become a hotbed for entrepreneurship on the African continent. The Heritage Foundation recently ranked Rwanda #59 in its 2012 Index of Economic Freedom making Rwanda Africa’s third-highest ranked country behind Mauritius and Botswana.
Rwanda scored a 64.9 on a 100-point scale; ten points higher than its 2008 score due largely in part to major reforms expediting the registration process for businesses. Rwanda’s score is also five points higher than the world average and ten points higher than the regional average.
Rwanda was also ranked highly on the World Bank’s 2011 Ease of Doing Business report in the ease of starting a business category where it was ranked #8—the only African country to make it into the top ten.
Not only does Rwanda’s regulatory environment benefit entrepreneurs but the education system has also begun to embrace entrepreneurship.
Back in 2008 mandatory entrepreneurship classes were added throughout the secondary school curriculum in Rwanda. The Rwanda Education Board has since developed a strong entrepreneurship curriculum with assistance from the United Nation’s Industrial Development Organization.
This focus on entrepreneurship at the secondary school level should help to ensure that students come out of secondary school with the skills necessary to start and run their own businesses.
Interested in Entrepreneurship in Rwanda?
Rwanda is clearly on the right path for creating a more entrepreneurial culture. Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) was brought to Rwanda to celebrate this. GEW is the world’s largest celebration of entrepreneurship – engaging 7.5 million people each November through tens of thousands of activities around the world.
In 2011, Rwanda joined 122 other countries to participate in this incredible movement for the first time, reaching 12,000 people through twenty-six local events.
In 2012, GEW/Rwanda has partnered with the Ministry of Youth and ICT (Strategic Partner), the Rwanda Development Board (Strategic Partner), IGIHE, Ltd. (Media Partner) and GW Creators (Design Partner) to reach upwards of 25,000 people through fifty different activities around the country.
Hosted nationally by the Babson-Rwanda Entrepreneurship Center, the initiative is powered globally by the Ewing M. Kauffman Foundation, sponsored by Dell and the NYSE Euronext Foundation, and enjoys the support of dozens of world leaders, hundreds of national hosts, and a growing network of 24,000 partner organizations.
For more information, visit rw.unleashingideas.org, and follow GEW/Rwanda on Facebook or Twitter.