Kagame And The World Bank Say Rwanda Will Achieve Upper-Middle Income Of US$4,000 Per Capita By 2035 And High-Income Of US$12,000 By 2050

Rwanda head of state General Paul Kagame and Kristalina Georgieva, CEO of the World Bank, Kigali, November 9, 2018

By David Himbara

General Paul Kagame and Kristalina Georgieva, World Bank CEO just announced that Rwanda will achieve an upper-middle income of US$4,000 per capita by 2035 and high-income of US$12,000 by 2050. There is one problem — Kagame and the World Bank don’t show how and when Rwanda will emerge from its current low-income status of US$743 to lower middle income of US$1,026. This is what Rwanda is supposed to achieve by 2020 which is a year from now, according to Rwanda Vision 2020. To achieve Vision 2020, Rwanda would have to increase its per capita income by US$283 because its current per capita is a mere US$743. In other words, Rwanda Vision 2020 is dead.

Meanwhile, Kagame and the World Bank keep on fantasizing

 

When measured by the International poverty line of living on less than US$1.90 a day, 56% of Rwandans are poor. In other words, 6.7 Rwandans out 12 million are poor. When measured at living on less than US$5.50 a day, 92.2% of Rwandans are poor. According to this measurement, 11 million out of 12 million are poor. The question then is — by what means will Rwanda uplift these millions to achieve the upper-middle-income of US$4,000 in 2035? That is 17 years from now.