(Jamaica Gleaner) – Rwandan President Paul Kagame has said that the driving force behind the economic growth that his country had achieved in the 2010s was driven mainly by the agricultural sector.
He was responding to a question from a member of civil society yesterday during a discussion dubbed ‘Think Jamaica 2022’ at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston.
The Rwandan leader was asked to comment on the driving forces behind his country’s success in moving its gross domestic product from $6.12 billion in 2010 to $10.83 billion in 2020.
He said that the main sectors driving the Rwandan economy are agriculture, services, manufacturing and tourism.
Kagame said that through the agricultural sector, the country had become self-sufficient and now exports produce to neighbouring countries in Africa.
The country also exports high-value crops such as coffee and various teas.
Kagame said that his country concentrates on high-end tourism, pulling in significant earnings from showcasing mountain gorillas.
It is estimated that there are about 1,000 gorillas in the wild in Rwanda.
On the question of increasing female representation in politics, the Rwandan leader said that the country took legislative steps to address the inequality that once favoured males over females.
He said the country created a mechanism whereby a gender monitoring office was established in the government to ensure that the policies designed to push women into leadership positions were successful.
Commenting on how his country used digitisation to help drive the transformation of the economy, Kagame pointed out that with Rwanda being landlocked, there were a lot of challenges.
However, he said that the government, through its digitisation programme, managed to achieve significant connectivity not just within the country, but with the rest of the world.
In terms of bilateral arrangements, Kagame indicated that Jamaican universities and their counterparts in his country could benefit from mutual exchange programmes.
Responding to a question for ideas on how Jamaica could tackle the issue of environmental pollution – as his country has been widely hailed as the cleanest in Africa and one of the cleanest in the world – Kagame indicated that there had been a mindset change in Rwanda.
He noted that while in Rwanda there was the need for donors to provide funds for education and health, “we don’t need any money to just clean our houses”.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness told the session, which was live-streamed and offered Rwandans an opportunity to follow the discussion, that for Jamaica, culture was an important tool in economic development.
He noted that Jamaica needs to find a mechanism to protect the intellectual property that is involved in its culture and monetise it.
“For Jamaica, music is such an important part of our culture, more than that, it’s now a part of our identity, and so we need to embrace it, take greater ownership of it and help to increase the intrinsic value of it, but at the same time, try to monetise it so that it can genuinely, truly reflect as part of our national output,” Holness said.
Kagame left the country yesterday after completing a three-day visit.
