Rwanda least corrupt country in Africa

Experts from the service sector are in Kigali for a two-day Service Investment Forum to discuss how to effectively grow a service-based economy as is Rwanda’s target for 2020.
The forum, organized by the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), has attracted over 300 participants from Africa and beyond.
Opening the forum, RDB’s CEO Clair Akamanzi underscored the importance of the service sector, saying that the ideas from the forum will help to achieve the country’s ambition of doubling the ratio of service sector’s investment to GDP from the current 10% to 20% by 2020.
Her remarks were backed by Finance Minister Claver Gatete who opened the event with a reassurance message of the strong and resilient economy as a major incentive to back investments in the service sector. Gatete explained that Government is committed to back efforts to revitalize the service sector because of its immense importance to the economy, for instance as the source of over 70% of all domestic taxes, and with potential to provide more jobs than the agricultural sector.
“We want to make the service sector the engine of growth with an annual growth of at least 14%,” Gatete noted.
Rwanda’s real GDP growth in 2012 was 8%, higher than the projected 7.7%, which is attributed to the expansion of the service sector which grew by 12.2% last year with communication and transport activities taking the lead having expanded by 19.5%.
By 2020, Rwanda wants to have reduced the number of people below the poverty line to below 20% and also be able to create at least 200,000 jobs per year, and the service sector is vital to reach that goal considering that it already surpasses agriculture in terms of employment creation.
From this forum, Rwanda is seeking to learn which strategies to adopt for fast results. RDB is also using the opportunity to showcase investment opportunities.
Over fifty high caliber speakers are expected to speak on selected panels of the key areas within the service sector that Rwanda has identified to help it become a first choice for those services within the region. One such expert is Dr. Rama Sithanen, formerly a vice-Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of Mauritius and who has been appointed to serve as Chairman of RDB to help possibly transfer and relate some of Mauritius’ successful approaches to Rwanda in a bid to make its visions tangible.
But this, he warned, will not be easy. “Having a vision is good but you have to be ready to walk the extra mile to realize it and Rwanda should be ready to deal with the competition presented by over fifty African countries that are also working towards becoming the first choice for the same things Rwanda is targeting,” Dr. Rama warned.
Mauritius is seen today as Africa’s middleman for international investors seeking to invest on the continent with over 40% of major investments in Africa having a base in Mauritius; to achieve this, Dr. Rama said, it took time to build both investor confidence and trust.
“If you don’t get it right you lose out but even when you get it right, there’s stiff competition,” added the man with 33 years of professional experience both in private and public sectors.
The government wants to establish Rwanda as a regional financial centre, transform and revamp the transport and logistics, strengthen the ICT infrastructure for information technology related services as well as taking healthcare to the next level to make Rwanda a target for medical tourism.
“You will need to strike a balance on a number of factors, especially taxes; ensure you don’t have very high tax regimes that scare away investors but also not very low taxes as to exploit the country for less benefits. I would advise that you go for simplicity: a simple system that is understandable by all,” counseled Dr. Rama.