Parliament has approved $175 million or Rwf175 billion aimed at financing Rwanda’s human capital development efforts. The financing package, consisting of an $87.5 million grant and an $87.5 million loan from the International Development Association (IDA) – a member of the World Bank Group — seeks to support the country’s policy and institutional reforms. Rwanda and IDA signed the financing agreement on December 2021, and the Plenary Session of the Chamber of Deputies adopted the law ratifying it on February 21, 2022. This is the second in a series of three development policy financing operations to be delivered between 2020 and 2022, with the first $150 million having approved in December 2020. The World Bank says that the programme helps boost family access to health, nutrition, education, and social safety nets. While defending the funding before lawmakers, Uzziel Ndagijimana, the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning said the loan has a 0.75 per cent interest rate and will be repaid in 31 years. It has a grace period of seven years, he disclosed. “Human capital development is one of the goals of our country’s National Strategy for Transformation (NST1),” Ndagijimana pointed out. The aim of this initiative is to support a stable economy and overall development in Rwanda through contributing to the country’s bid to become financially self-reliant, he added. The programme, Ndagijimana said, will also help increase the number of social protection beneficiaries including in the Vision Umurenge Programme (VUP), bolster the country’s nutrition and education efforts. He said the yields of the programme since 2020 were impressive. For instance, he disclosed, the proportion of regular beneficiary households of the Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme enrolled in human capital-focused social safety net interventions increased from 19 per cent in March 2020 to 41.5 per cent in September 2021. The proportion of young children that was receiving a minimum package of integrated early childhood development services in accordance with national standards, had gone up from 17 per cent in 2020 to 42 per cent in November 2021. Under the health sector, over 85 per cent of the target population has been covered by community-based health insurance, up from 69 per cent in 2020. These efforts have been critical to ensuring that people have access to sustainable health insurance schemes in Rwanda.
