Zimbabwe is seeking to replicate Rwanda Development Board’s model to set up its own one-stop investment promotion agency, Business Times understands. As such, Harare invited Rwanda to help with the process. Subsequently, Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa invited RDB chief executive Clare Akamanzi and chief operating officer Emmanuel Hategeka to share their experiences and insights on how to set up such an entity. Speaking to The New Times from Harare, Akamanzi said the Zimbabwean leader had requested President Paul Kagame to avail the two officials to facilitate the process. “President Mnangagwa requested our President to send us to share the experience of setting up a one-stop investor organisation like RDB,” she said. While in Harare, the two will meet a number of top government officials and business leaders before addressing the country’s cabinet. Zimbabwe’s presidential spokesperson George Charamba said President Mnangagwa was impressed by the strides made by Rwanda on the economic front, during a recent visit to Rwanda. Charamba earlier this week told the media that they took interest in replicating Rwanda’s model when a Zimbabwean government delegation was in Rwanda for last month’s extraordinary African Union summit in Kigali. “When we went to the extraordinary summit for the signing of the Continental Free Trade Area in Kigali, one key question we raised bilaterally was ‘how have you been able to raise so much FDIs in so short a time and so successfully?’ President Kagame said, ‘I have an institutional home where investors arrive and are received and that is called the Rwanda Development Board and you are free to interface with its CEO’, and for a good two hours the President had a whole meeting with the CEO of the Rwanda Development Board,” Charamba told journalists. The development is part of a broader plan by Mnangagwa’s government to open up the Southern African country to global investors. This week, RDB was named as eastern Africa’s second best investment promotion agency at an annual investment meeting conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Rwanda is ranked second in Africa in the latest World Bank Doing Business – and 41th globally. The country improved 15 places globally after implementing five key reforms in one year. editorial@newtimes.co.rw
