As could have been expected, this year’s Doing Business Report published by the World Bank, Rwanda continued its upward trend of good performance. With 47 business reforms across all indicators, it emerged the second best performer in Africa – after Mauritius – and 56th out of 190 countries. The report said that Rwanda was not only consistent in improving its business environment, it had used the Doing Business report as a guide to continue improving. “Rwanda is one of only 10 economies that have implemented reforms in all of the Doing Business indicators and every year since Doing Business 2006,” the report reads. It was not a stroke of luck that the economy has been performing well, but a well engineered plan to transform the country into a middle income country by 2020. The idea to embrace technology has been the main driver. Most government services have gone online, not only reducing interactions with officials, but also plugging potential graft holes that are the bane of many countries. The thing that seems to amaze visitors to government offices is that they are manned by young people. Young, ambitious and audacious, they do not fear experimenting, and once they falter, they start all over again. It is that kind of spirit; the transparent, innovative and progressive policies that that have opened many doors to success, and as the report seems to point out, a ten-year continuous streak of good performance is not a mean feat. In normal circumstances, an editorial writer would urge those behind the success to not to let up, but from what has been demonstrated, that is not about to happen soon.
