Can Rwanda step up from underdeveloped level to middle income country?

By The Rwandan Economist

INTRODUCTION

Vision 2020 is a “reflection of Rwandans’ aspiration and determination to construct a united, democratic and inclusive Rwandan identity”, stated President Kagame in 2012. Vision 2020 had 48 key indicators and specific targets that were to be achieved by or in 2020. Vision 2020 deadline has already passed. There has not, however, been any known systematic review to assess why the Government of Rwanda (GoR) did not reach the targets or where it was unlikely to reach the targets stated in Vision 2020, given its rate of progress throughout the 20 years from the year 2000.

The objective of the present article is to provide an objective report on the ins and outs of the Government of Rwanda failure to achieving the objectives of Vision 2020 after 20 years of its implementation. It also aims to assess the likelihood of achieving the targets of Vision 2050 which have not yet been achieved at the time of this research basing the rate of the then progress towards that targeted deadline.

1.The six pillars and the associated cross-cutting areas for the GoR’s Vision 2020

According to Paul Kagame, the current president of the Republic of Rwanda, Vision 2020 sets the longer-term perspective and objectives for the country and its citizens’ economic status by 2020. Kagame also argued that the overarching aim of Vision 2020 was to transform Rwanda “into a middle-income nation in which Rwandans were healthier, educated and generally more prosperous, united and competitive both regionally and globally.” In this perspective, a closer analysis of Vision 2020 shows that it was subdivided into six interwoven pillars and three cross-cutting areas. The six pillars were: 

1) good governance and a capable state 

2) development of skilled human capital to drive a knowledge-based economy 

3) vibrant private sector to drive the economic growth 

4) development of a world-class physical infrastructure 

5)development of modernized and export-led farming (both agriculture and livestock)

 6)regional and global markets integration.” The six pillars of Vision 2020 were interlinked with three cross-cutting areas of development, namely “gender, environment and climate change and science and technology.” 

2.Indicators of a Middle Income Countries (MICs) 

The world’s Middle Income Countries (MICs) were a diverse group by size, population, and income level. They were defined as lower middle-income economies – those with a GNI per capita between $1,036 and $4,045; and upper middle-income economies – those with a GNI per capita between $4,046 and $12,535 (2021). Middle income countries were home to 75% of the world’s population and 62% of the world’s poor. At the same time, MICs represent about one third of global GDP and were major engines of global growth.

The World Bank Group continues to evolve its partnership with MICs, working with them simultaneously as clients, shareholders, and global actors. The World Bank provides increasingly tailored services—financial products (loans, guarantees, risk management products) and knowledge and advisory services (including on a reimbursable basis)—to support MICs in their global roles, to address their second-generation reform challenges, and to facilitate knowledge exchange and South-South cooperation.

3.Factors underlying the failure of the Rwandan vision 2020 

Vision 2020 objectives to be achieved were cross-cutting to mean that they had to develop different sectors. However, there were some significant fields which more characterize a middle income country.

3.1.Education 

Education is in shambles, which explains why Rwanda has one of the worst human capital index (HCI) in the world. Rwanda’s Human Capital Index Rank was142 out of 157 countries. As the World Bank explains, “Rwanda’s HCI was lower than the average for its region” and “lower than the average for its income group.” Rwanda’s HCI was the worst in East Africa – even worse than Burundi’s, a country in conflict. Burundi’s Human Capital Index rank was138 versus Rwanda’s at 142. 

The Government of Rwanda’s Education Sector Strategic Plan for 2018/2019 –  2023/24 (ESSP) gives a blueprint for an education system that seeks to “ensure Rwandan citizens have sufficient and appropriate skills, competences, knowledge and attitudes to drive the continued social and economic transformation of the country and to be competitive in the global market”. However, a number of major challenges must be overcome in order to achieve this impact. On 19 June 2018, the IGC jointly hosted an event with Laterite and Innovations for Poverty Action, at which three researchers and an experienced teacher engaged with the challenges and choices faced by Rwanda’s education system with respect to basic education, literacy, and reading culture.

3.1.1.Four difficult policy choices

Dimitri Stoelinga and Sachin Gathani, founders of research firm Laterite, described four challenges and their associated difficult policy choices.

The first challenge they described was a very significant disconnect between age and grade due to the common practice of repeating grades. For example, just 10% of students age 13 have finished primary school at an age at which they should be enrolled in the first year of secondary school. In response, the Government could either tolerate higher dropout rates to keep students who have met the learning requirements for each school year, or enforce low repetition rates so that more students progress; the Government chose the latter more equitable option, but reversed this policy in 2018 because too many students were being promoted without the requisite knowledge for the next grade. There was also a need to invest heavily in education quality in order to increase appropriate student promotion rates at each grade, although it clearly takes several years for higher numbers of school children to be seen in higher grades.

The second challenge was that dropout rates for the P6 year – the final year of primary school – were high; one reason for this was that if a child fails the P6 examination at the end of primary school, s/he seems to be much more likely to drop out than to repeat the school year and retake the exam. The Government faces a choice between allowing increased repetition rates in P6 by aligning exam scores closer to learning expectations, at the cost of fewer transitions to secondary school – and the more equitable options which were to scrap the P6 exam and/or introduce quotas, ensuring that children from less wealthy backgrounds make it to the best schools.

The third challenge was how to ensure children were fed at school. The Government implements a school feeding program that was partially subsidized but involves a compulsory cost-share with parents. However, this involves a de facto school fee as poor, highly price-sensitive parents were not allowed to opt out; nonpayment and administration also pose challenges. To reduce cost and increase reach to more children, the Government could have increased the subsidy to cover the whole cost, but at the cost of other priorities; the meals could have been centrally organized and standardized in a bid to reduce cost; and/or or measures could be taken to improve administration. Although the Government chose the latter, the challenges of reaching the poorest children remain.

The fourth challenge was that since 2009, primary school teachers have been expected to do double-shifting, which entails two six-hour shifts per school day; this reduces the pupil-to-classroom ratio through more classes, but was a transitional measure that results in very high teacher workload. To reduce stress on the education system, the Government could opt to invest in more teachers, but not more classrooms, as an intermediary option; the Government could also opt to invest in other areas likely to improve learning outcomes including pre-primary education, teacher training, motivation and pay. The actual choice of the Government has been to make a gradual transition involving very large investments in teaching resources and classroom expansion in the coming years. It was important to flag that there was not necessarily a “correct” choice to address each of these challenges; each policy option faces its own trade-offs.

3.1.2.Evaluation of pay-for-performance for teachers

Andrew Zeitlin, who works with Georgetown University and the International Growth Centre, gave a talk on the design of a forthcoming study assessing the impact of pay-for-performance on teachers’ recruitment and performance in Rwanda. Zeitlin outlined the challenge: teacher skills and motivation were low in East Africa; in Uganda, only 20% of primary school teachers have mastery of their content and were absent from school 27% of the time, according to the World Bank Service Delivery Indicators. Teacher quality matters for student learning outcomes and for lifetime income. A 2014 study by Chetty et al. found that replacing a teacher from the bottom 5th percentile of teacher quality, with a teacher at the median, increases students’ lifetime income by $250,000 per classroom.

Zeitlin described the ‘Supporting Teachers Through Assessment in Rwandan Schools’ (STARS) experiment, which offers 314 newly hired teachers across 164 schools (who may be new or may have taught previously) one of two types of contracts: fixed wage involving an end-of-year payout of 20,000 Rwandan francs (17 US dollars), and pay-for-performance involving an end-of-year payout of 100,000 Rwandan francs (87 US dollars) for teachers in the top quintile of a performance metric. This metric measures teachers’ effort, interpreted as preparation, pedagogy and presence in the classroom and students’ learning outcomes.

The study would aim to answer a number of important questions including but not limited to the following: Do pay-for-performance advertisements induce the selection of higher performing teachers? Do pay-for-performance contracts affect learning outcomes of students? Other anticipated descriptive lessons include whether existing inputs into teacher screening (Teacher Training Colleges and district exams) predict the value that teachers would add, or whether alternative instruments could do better; and whether teachers who quit tend to be of higher or lower quality than the average – and by implication whether high churn tends to help or hinder overall teacher quality. The results in the form of the finished IGC-funded study, were forthcoming.

3.2.Agriculture

Agriculture was crucial for Rwanda’s growth and reduction of poverty, as the backbone of the economy, it accounts for 39 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), 80 percent of employment, 63 percent of foreign exchange earnings, and 90 percent of the country’s food needs. The sector was challenged by land constraints due to population pressure, poor water management, small average land holdings, lack of public and private capacity, and limited commercialization constrained by poor access to output and financial markets. The country’s average annual income of $550 per capita reflects a rural poverty rate of 49 percent, a figure that soars to 76 percent for families whose main source of income was agriculture.

Every day, the food we eat connects us to a vast global web of farmers, traders, food manufacturers, retailers and many other people involved in getting food from farm to fork. Most of us probably don’t pause to think about it while biting into a piece of fruit or a slice of bread, but this global food system was central to some of the biggest challenges facing humanity.

3.2.1.Current challenges facing the global food system

Let’s start with the most obvious one. The global food system was expected to provide safe and nutritious food to a population that would likely grow from 7.5 billion people today, to nearly 10 billion by 2050. Not only would there be more mouths to feed, but as incomes grow in emerging and developing economies, so too would the demand for meat, fish, and dairy.

However, food production was only one aspect of the food system. The agro-food sector also provides a livelihood for millions of people. Globally, most of the people living in extreme poverty were in rural areas where food production was often the most important economic activity. There were an estimated 570 million farms worldwide today, and millions of other people work in food-related jobs.

The global food system also has a large environmental footprint. In fact, agriculture occupies nearly 40% of the earth’s surface, far more than any other human activity. In addition, irrigation of agricultural crops comprises 70% of global water use, and agriculture directly contributes to around 11% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (mostly through cattle). Expanding agricultural land can also lead to deforestation, additional GHG emissions, and a loss of biodiversity.

3.2.2.Setting the table to address the triple challenge

These three challenges – feeding a growing population, providing a livelihood for farmers, and protecting the environment – must be tackled together if we were to make sustainable progress in any of them. But making progress on this “triple challenge” was difficult, as initiatives in one domain can have unintended consequences in another.

Sometimes, the consequences were positive. For instance, raising farm productivity can generate income growth in agriculture, make more food available for consumers at lower prices, and – in some cases – reduce pressure on the environment. But sometimes the consequences were negative and require balancing trade-offs. For example, policies to increase the environmental sustainability of agriculture could impose increased costs on farmers and lead to higher prices for consumers.

In other words, policies that address one part of the triple challenge often end up creating synergies (positive effects) or trade-offs (negative effects) with respect to other objectives—and a single-issue perspective on any objective can lead to unintended impacts on other objectives. Competing objectives and complex interactions, along with multiple stakeholders with a range of concerns, should make us cautious when specific ideas were proposed as “silver bullets” to fix the food system.

So what can policy makers do to address these important challenges, taking into account their interconnectedness? How should they find out if and when there was a conflict between two or more objectives? How should they deal with stakeholders who may resist an initiative they fear could harm their interests? And how should they co-ordinate with policy makers in other agencies or ministries, and with counterparts in other countries?

To begin the process of answering these difficult questions, the OECD organized a Global Forum on Agriculture in May 2019 to exchange ideas about the most important challenges facing the global food system today (the triple challenge), and the obstacles that stand in the way of overcoming them. Importantly, the conversation included views from a range of stakeholders affected by agro-food policy decisions – including farmers, traders, food manufacturers, consumer representatives, agricultural input suppliers, researchers, environmental NGOs, and policy makers. The OECD would build on this discussion to assess the main obstacles to achieving better policies for the global food system, and to identify good practices to help overcome them.

3.2.3.Future policies may require new recipes

Just like a good meal was a balanced meal, good policies would need to strike a balance between the different objectives of the triple challenge facing the global food system today. And just like a good meal depends not only on the chef, but also on the quality of the ingredients – so too would good policies depend not only on the policy maker, but also on the input from many stakeholders. Given the scale and complexity of these challenges, policy makers may need to experiment with new recipes to cook up a set of policy solutions that were to everyone’s taste.

3.3.Key economic targets that were unlikely to be achieved by 2020

targets that were considered ‘unlikely to be achieved’ were those for which the level of progress against the target or action at the 20-year stage was considerably below what was planned and the target or action was therefore unlikely to be achieved at the current rate of implementation. This reflected  where the percentage of the annual target reached at the 20-year stage was less than 60%. The analysis, using the formula (Y / 20 × 20) and the formula ‘achieved in 2020/target for Vision 2020 × 100’, indicates the following:

1) The target for the ‘growth rate of the industry sector’ was set at 14% between 2000 and 2020. Based on the available data, the GoR has only managed to achieve 7% of this. The current performance was50% of the average LMICs’ level of 14%, which means this target was unlikely to be achieved by 2020 at the current rate, of which the current performance of the GoR was 47%. 

2) In addition to the above, the GoR has set a target of 8.5% in terms of ‘growth rate of the agricultural sector’. However, the GoR has achieved an “average annual sector growth of 8.5% between 2012 and 2020. The GoR’s current performance was equivalent to 47%. The performance at the 17-year stage was considerably below what was expected (85%) and the target was unlikely to be achieved at the current rate of implementation. 

3) The GoR has set the target of ‘growth rate of the service sector’ at 13.5% by 2020. Rwanda has managed to achieve an average growth rate of 7%. This performance level was just over 50% of the 13.5% performance level for the LMICs for 2020 but it was far below 85% and was therefore unlikely to be achieved by 2020. 

4) The GoR has set the target for ‘gross national savings’ at 20% of GDP by 2020. The performance in 2016 stood at 12.9% and 11.04% in 2017 [CIA, (2017b), p.1], which was equivalent to 55.20%. The current level of performance was considerably below the expected level of 85% at the 17th year of the 20-year period. This target was unlikely to be achieved at the current rate of implementation. 

5) Other factors which show that Rwanda was on its way to becoming an LMIC by 2020 include its gross national investment (% of GDP). Rwanda’s gross national investment (% of GDP) seems to have increased from 18% in 2000 to 21% in 2012. However, it missed its original target of gross national investment (% of GDP) of 30% (estimated in 2000) and the revised target for 2020 remained unchanged at 30%. The performance on the gross national investment (% of GDP) stood at 14.5% in January 2015. Despite not changing its target from 2000, Rwanda’s target of 30% was higher than the 28.5% average expected for LMICs. 

6) Regarding the GoR target of ‘–3% for external balance on goods and services (% of GDP)’, the GoR has achieved –16.5% (estimated in 2015), which was equivalent to 19.50%. The current level of performance of –3% was noticeably below the expected level of 85% at the 19th year of the 20-year period. Thus, this GoR target was unlikely to be achieved by 2020. 

7) The country has set a target of 75% in terms of ‘percentage of payment transactions done electronically’. The performance stood at 16.1% in 2016and was far below the expected level of 85% in 2019. Therefore, this target was unlikely to be achieved by 2020 at the current rate of implementation. 

8)Agricultural population (%)’ was expected to fall from 90% to 50% by 2020. The agricultural sector employs around 70% of the labor force (2015) [MINAGRI, (2015), p.1], which means the GoR has only managed to achieve 44.44% of the expected target. The current agricultural population was estimated to be a little less than 80% of the total population, which means the original target of reducing this number to 50%, envisaged by the first version of Vision 2020 (estimated in 2000), has not been met (Rwanda Development Board (RDB), 2015). Rwanda’s targeted 50% by 2020 was worse than the 49% average in LMICs and was unlikely to be achieved by 2020. 

9) The ‘percentage of agricultural operations mechanized’ was supposed to be 40% but only 25% of farm operations was expected to become mechanized in 2017/18 [RAB, (2016), p.1], which was only 45% of the expected mechanization level expected by 2020. 

10)Access to electricity (% of population)’ was expected to reach 75% by 2020 but the GoR has only managed to reach 24.5% (urban wereas) and 7.7% (rural areas).The GoR has only managed to achieve 32.67% of its objective in the cities and only 10.27% in the rural areas. The fact that about 90% of the country was rural suggests that most of the Rwandan people do not have access to electricity. 

11) The ‘percentage of households using wood as a source of energy’ was expected to be 50% by 2020 but now stands at 93% (rural) and 45% (urban).. The GoR’s current performance was equivalent to 53.77% of the expected performance by 2020 and was therefore unlikely to be achieved by 2020.

12) The ‘percentage of the population below the poverty line’ was expected to fall to 20%, while extreme poverty was expected to be eliminated by 2020. The population of people below the poverty line was then 39.1%. The GoR’s current performance was53% lower than the expected target in other LMICs and was therefore unlikely to be achieved by 2020. Finally, Rwanda has set the target of “food consumption score (CFSVA) of poor FCS: 0% and borderline: 5%.” According to Sabiiti, citing the Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey (EICV4-2015) report), 38% of Rwandan children under the age of five have poor nutrition and face stunting, while 9% were underweight throughout the country. In fact, according to Thomson et al. (2016, p.1), “while Rwanda is one of few countries on track to reduce the prevalence of underweight children under five years old by 50% from 1990 to 2015 (a target of millennium development goal (MDG) 1), the problem of underweight children remains a large public health concern with one out of ten children having low weight-for-age.” Furthermore, while “stunting, which was an indicator of chronic malnutrition and was a key nutritional issue in Rwanda, has decreased from 43% in 2012 to 37% in 2015, children’s diets were poor with only 15% of children between 6 and 23 months meeting the requirements for a minimum acceptable diet based on dietary diversity and meal frequency. Nationwide, 12% of children in that age group were underweight, a prevalence that was considered poor”. Sesonga’s  findings were confirmed by the most recent report published by the WFP (2015) which shows that “child malnutrition rates were generally higher in rural areas, especially for stunting which stands at 40% in rural areas compared to 27% in urban.” Levels of wasting stands at 1.7% across the country (with 1.1% urban areas and 1.9% rural areas), which clearly indicates that there was“no significant differences between urban and rural areas”. In 2015, the percentage of underweight children was estimated at 5% in urban areas, while it was as high as 9% in rural areas of the country. The objective of achieving a “food consumption score (CFSVA) of poor FCS: 0% and borderline: 5%” was unlikely to be achieved at the current performance rate. 

3.4. Key social indicators that were unlikely to be achieved 

Where the level of progress against the target or action at the 17-year stage was considerably below what was planned, the target or action was unlikely to be achieved by 2020 at the current rate of implementation. This reflects where the percentage of the annual target reached at the 17-year stage was less than 60%. The analysis, using the formula (Y / 20 × 17) and the formula ‘achieved in 2017/target for Vision 2020 × 100’, shows that the GoR has only managed to achieve less than 60% of the following targets: 

The GoR’s ‘infant mortality rate per 1,000’ was set at 27. Currently, the infant mortality rate stands at 55.34 [GEOBA, (2017), p.1] and was over 100% higher than the average LMIC. Since the GoR has only managed to achieve 48.79% of this target, the target was unlikely to be achieved by 2020 at the current rate.

 Available statistics show that the GoR was seriously struggling in terms of fighting child malnutrition. It seems the country was losing the battle of “eradicating child malnutrition in Rwanda, where 38% of children under the age of five were stunted” 

The GoR has set to reduce ‘acute malnutrition (wasted) %’ to 0.5% but the rate currently stands at 2.2%. The GoR’s current performance was only equivalent to 22.73% and was clearly unlikely to be achieved in the remaining years before the deadline in 2020. As indicated above, 38% of children under the age of five were stunted in Rwanda 

 The GoR has set to reduce the rate of ‘chronic malnutrition (%)’ to 15%. Currently, the rate of chronic malnutrition stands at 38%.Thus, Rwanda has only achieved 39.48% and the target for 2020 was unlikely to be achieved. 

 The target for ‘doctors per 100,000 inhabitants’ was set at ten. In 2010, there were an estimated 5.5 doctors per 100,000 people in Rwanda.. Calculations show that the GoR has only achieved 55% of this target. At the current rate, this target was unlikely to be achieved by 2020. According to Murekezi as far as health and medical practitioners were concerned, the head of government mentioned that Rwanda has 19,951 workers in the health sector, including 14,482 health and medical workers, including 1,089 general practitioners, 303 specialists, 10,795 nurses, 752 midwives and 1,543 lab technicians. Murekezi further noted that Rwanda’s physician-to-population ratio was1:10,055, against the 1:10,000 WHO standard; the nurse-to-population ratio stands at 1:1,094, against the 1:1,000 recommended by the WHO; the midwife-to-population ratio was1:4,064, against the 1:3,000 prescribed by the WHO; and the laboratory technician-to-population ratio was1:7,653, against the 1:5,000 recommended by the WHO. Ndegeya  states that Rwanda counts an average of one doctor per 12,000 people. The projection from the 2012 fourth population and housing census indicates that the Rwandan population would be 12.7 million in 2020. This means that the country needs to constantly put on the market an average of 80 doctors per year to meet the one physician per 10,000 population ratio by 2020. 

The target for ‘gross secondary school enrolment (+TVET)’ was set at 98%. However, the gross secondary school enrolment (+TVET) was 38.0% in 2015. This target was clearly unlikely to be achieved by 2020. According to MINEDUC,  “Secondary education: enrolment decreased from 565,312 in 2014 to 543,936 in 2015 at this level leading to a reduction in both gross enrolment (40.7% in 2014 to 38.0% in 2015) and net enrolment rates (35.7% in 2014 to 28.3% in 2015). Technical and vocational education training (TVET): the number of students in TVET schools was increased from 93,024 in 2014 to 94,373 in 2015, with an increase of 1.5%.”

3.5. Key governance indicators that were unlikely to be achieved 

The ‘corruption ranking: rank in world corruption’ target was set at <10 for 2020.The The GoR currently ranks 50/176 and scores 54/100 ]. The corruption rank in Rwanda averaged 72.42 from 2005 until 2016, reaching an all-time high of 121 in 2006 and a record low of 44 in 2015. According to Transparency International in the World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey 2016, Rwanda scored highly on the component of diversion of public funds to companies, individuals, or groups due to corruption […]. It scored 5.6 on a scale of 1–7 where point one was very grave, while seven was the highest score […] on transparency, accountability and corruption in the public sector. Rwanda scored 4.5 on a scale of 1–6.”

Since the GoR aimed to rank below ten and was currently ranked 54th in the world, the level of progress against the target or action at the 17-year stage was considerably below what was planned and the target was unlikely to be achieved at the current rate. In addition, the GoR’s achievement was far below the LMICs’ average, which was10th. 

CONCLUSION

Since the necessary political support was provided by the president of Rwanda, the Prime Minister’s Office, MINECOFIN and a number of other government departments, the fact that the GoR seems to be unsuccessful in making ‘this kind of dream a reality’ as Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea did in the early 1980s suggests that the targets for Vision 2020 were either unrealistic, that the GoR was unable to devise and implement policies in a coordinated manner, was unable to mobilize the necessary resources, or a combination of some or all of these factors could be blamed for the mixed success described in this article. It was also possible that the GoR was not able to harmonize all the different plans and programs through which it sought to achieve the objectives of Vision 2020. The GoR consequently harmonized the objectives, targets and indicators for strategic objectives such as EDPRS (I and II) and the 7YGP with Vision 2020. Coordination of all the inputs, processes and outputs for all the different programs and plans used to implement Vision 2020 could be the biggest problem the GoR was facing. For example, as mentioned above, Vision 2020 was being implemented through growth and poverty-reduction strategies (EDPRS I and II). It was also being implemented through the 7YGP, a national plan with a seven-year horizon and a number of other sector-specific plans such as SSPs (for example, health plan, agricultural reform plan, etc.) and DDPs at district level, which were linked to the MTEF, a five-year budgeting plan. The challenge for the GoR and its development partners was how to develop a comprehensive ToC and LogFrame linking the objectives of all the programs that were being implemented at district level of government such as those that were implemented at sectoral and departmental level with Vision 2020, which were planned and coordinated at the national level. Another problem the GoR and the development partners have to deal with in order to improve the success of Vision 2020 was to ensure that the AAP and the performance contracts (imihigos) which cover a single-year period and whose objectives and budgets were expressed into a single-year period link with the ultimate objectives of Vision 2020. The other challenge was how to develop the ToC and the LogFrame that link the four layers or levels of performance; namely demonstrate how the achievement of the objectives for single-year AAPs (i.e., projects) and the annual performance contracts (imihigos) (for district mayors) (level 1) lead to the achievement of short-term programs such as the five-year SSP and DDP (level 2), the seven-year programs such as the 7YGP (level 3) and ultimately the objectives for Vision 2020 . In summary, the GoR needed a ToC and LogFrame for Vision 2020 that would have demonstrated how the desired change would happen as result of all four levels (activities level, the AAP and district imihigo level, the five-year strategic plans level and MTEF plans and the 7YGP) and would  help to achieve the ultimate objectives of Vision 2020. If the GoR had  decided to do this, it would have to take into account the fact that the success of the shorter period plans do indeed contribute to the achievements of longer-period programs and Vision 2020, but that these contributions were not always sufficient to make a significant contribution to the achievement of Vision 2020. The ToC and the LogFrame for Vision 2020 must clearly indicate how the six interwoven pillars and three cross-cutting areas discussed in this article would be achieved. 

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