Rwanda comes to Gujarat to seek investment

GANDHINAGAR - With robust 8.5 percent growth since 2006, the east African nation of Rwanda is seeking to put behind the ugly civil war of 1994 that claimed a million lives, calling upon Indian and global investors to invest and benefit from its progress. Prime Minister Bernard Mazuka led the country’s sales pitch at the two-day Vibrant Gujarat conclave here and spoke about the opportunities, especially in agriculture, energy, tourism, information technology, mining and realty.

“Africa has grown at six percent in the past five years. Our own country has sustained a growth of over 8.5 percent,” Mazuka told the large gathering of global and Indian investing community Wednesday.

“The opportunities are there for you to consider.”

A power point presentation circulated here said: “Rwanda has been rebuilt since the traumatic events of 1994 as a thriving, safe country. It claimed political stability better than that in India and China, based on a World Bank study.”

The country, it said, adopted some major commercial laws in 2009, in addition to administrative changes, to make it easier to start a business in the country, employ workers, register property, get credit and be protected as an investor.

Officials also quoted CNN Money as calling their country a Mecca for venture capitalists and Fortune magazine as

saying: “Rwanda is the most undervalued stock on the continent and maybe in the world.”

A country of around a little over 10 million, Rwanda is in the heart of central and east Africa, sharing its borders with Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya. The region has around 100 million consumers.

“Our Vision 2020 is to transform the economy into a middle income country from a subsistence agriculture economy to a knowledge-based society, with high levels of savings and private investment,” the presentation said.

In tourism, it said, the kind of journey offered was one of its kind - it is home to a third of the remaining mountain gorillas and Africa’s bird species, apart from volcanoes, game reserves, resorts and islands.

“In a short vacation, a tourist can reach volcanoes, rainforests, savannah, islands, lakes and the beautiful city of Kigali.”

An average tourist spends $200 a day and stays for at least a week. The country has 200 hotels and 4,500 rooms, with an occupancy of 70-97 percent. Investments into the tourism sector comprised 30 percent of registered projects in 2009.

These apart, a $500 million investment ensured a 2,700 km optic fibre link for high-speed communications. In fact, India’s Bharti Telecom, one of the two major telecom players, is also making a sizeable investment to spruce up infrastructure.

(Arvind Padmanabhan can be reached at arvind.p@ians.in)