By David Himbara
The World Bank shamelessly proclaims General Paul Kagame’s Rwanda to have one of the world’s best environments for doing business. The fact that cronyism is rampant in Rwanda, whereby the ruling party businesses dominate the economy does not matter to Kagame’s praise-singers at the World Bank. The fact that neither the ruling party businesses nor state-owned enterprises issue annual reports or reveal how board members are elected does not matter to the World Bank. In short, corporate governance in Rwanda is unknown – which does not matter to the World Bank. How Rwandan crony system in which a tiny elite captured both the state and private sector becomes a leading business environment in the world is only known to the World Bank.
The 2019 World Bank’s Doing Business Report and Rwanda’s ranking was most embarrassing
The 2019 Doing Business Report ranked Rwanda 29th out of 190 countries. Leading economies such as Japan, France and Switzerland were said to be poor performers in comparison Rwanda as follows:
29 Rwanda
30 Spain
31 Russian Federation
32 France
33 Poland
34 Portugal
35 Czech Republic
36 Netherlands
37 Belarus
38 Switzerland
39 Japan.
In the 2020 Doing Business Report, the World Bank changed its tune, dropping Rwanda to 38th position.
In the rankings of 2020, the World Bank dropped Rwanda to 38th position. This time Japan and other leading economies were ranked ahead of Rwanda as follows:
28 Russian Federation
29 Japan
30 Spain
31 China
32 France
33 Turkey
34 Azerbaijan
35 Israel
36 Switzerland
37 Slovenia
38 Rwanda
