Trying Hard Against the Odds: Governmental Industrialisation Efforts in Post-2000 Rwanda

In the first decade of its attempts to transform the country's economy, the Rwandan government deliberately neglected the industrial sector despite being aware of the fact that East Asian developmental states –its role models– caught up with high-income countries by focusing on manufacturing. Given Rwanda’s adverse exogenous conditions, most importantly its landlockedness, the government reasoned that it was more sensible to leapfrog traditional industrialisation and instead create high-value service sectors such as tourism and IT. A partial shift towards a dual focus on services and industry occurred only around 2014, when the government realised that it needed to diversify its exports and quickly create a large number of low-skills jobs. Since then, multi-dimensional and more or less concerted efforts have been made: priority sectors were identified and re-arranged, vertical support policies implemented, domestic and foreign investments acquired, several trial-and-error experiments conducted, and stronger government engagement via its party- and military-owned conglomerates enacted. While there have been occasional success stories, most manufacturing and agro-processing sub-sectors have not yet taken off, and some sector development plans failed completely. This paper provides a brief overview of the government’s various industrialisation strategies and initiatives over time, summarises several sector-specific trajectories so far, details one preliminary failure (community processing centres) and one surprising partial success (cement), and concludes with an outlook on the prospects of the most recent government plans.