The World Bank Country Director for East Africa, Keith Hansen, has pledged continuous support in different development activities in Rwanda and commended its strides of economic recovery from Covid-19. The director in charge of Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, and Somalia made the remarks after making a courtesy call on Prime Minister Edouard Ngirente on Wednesday, November 24. Present was also Rwanda’s Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Uzziel Ndagijimana and the Country Manager for Rwanda of World Bank, Rolande Pryce. Hansen said that his discussions with the Premier touched on how the country can move to the strong development path that it was on before the pandemic struck. Among areas of continued cooperation, he pointed out the strengthening of education system to recover from learning losses encountered because of Covid-19, improving agricultural productivity and building on Rwanda’s leadership in preparing for climate change. “The path that it (Rwanda) was on was strongly geared towards preparing for the future, Covid-19 delivered a shock, the country responded well and we are hopeful now that its vaccination rate continues to grow dramatically,” he said. “The country can now move beyond that and get back onto that path as well as looking at new opportunities and a few lessons from Covid-19.” Ndagijimana said there are various areas of cooperation between the two, ranging from infrastructure, education, addressing malnutrition, and other projects for development. He added that the World Bank is the biggest fund partner to the government, indicating that it contributed over $900 million in some of the projects carried out this year. In August, the World Bank announced a support fund of almost $300 million to Rwanda’s agriculture sector before the end of this year, to help in the recovery process as a majority of people in the country depend on agriculture for their livelihood. In June this year, The Bank also approved a grant of $20 million to boost the social inclusion of refugees hosted by Rwanda.
