Rwanda’s Post-Genocide Economic Reconstruction: The Mismatch between Elite Ambitions and Rural Realities
(2011) Reconstructing Rwanda: State Building & Human Rights after Mass Violence — ISBN: [ISBN: 978-029928264-6], p. 240-251, published
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- (en) In contrast to many other African states, Rwanda has a clear vision of how it wants to achieve economic progress and poverty reduction (MINECOFIN 2000, 2002, 2007). The overall aim of the current political elite is to transform Rwanda from a "low human development" to a "medium human development" country, as defined by the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Index. To accomplish this, the government is pursuing ambitious social engineering of the rural sector. First, policymakers are attempting to transform the agricultural sector into a professionalized motor for economic growth, which leaves little room for traditional smallholder agriculture. Second, they are upgrading rural life, which hides the extent of poverty and inequality. Finally, policymakers are transforming Rwanda into a target- driven society from the highest to the lowest level. Overall, these three goals fi t within a top- down developmentalist agenda where the state plays a central role in reshaping the rural environment. Top- down, state- centered governance is not new to Rwanda. Nor are the rural- urban gap, the anti- rural bias in policymaking, and the state- society cleavage specific to the post- 1994 period. But the current vision and ambition of the Rwandan elite go much farther than previous attempts at reform, and are all the more problematic, given that they see no role for small- scale peasants. This chapter provides a brief overview of Rwanda's economic recovery and then describes how the post- genocide political elite differ from their predecessors. Next, I analyze how current policymakers are realizing their three social engineering goals for rural society. The chapter concludes with some of the potential shortcomings and dangers of this project. To capture the discourse of Rwandan policymakers, I draw on twenty- six interviews conducted between May and July 2007 with persons closely involved in poverty reduction, agricultural policy, and land policy. These included officials of the three ministries centrally engaged in rural development: The Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EDPRS) department within the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MINECOFIN); the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI); and the Ministry of Land (MINITERE). Alongside secondary data, these interviews provide a comprehensive picture of the present rural development discourse within government circles. Then I draw from multiple focus- group interviews with distinct socioeconomic categories in six rural settings. These insights from the microlevel help contextualize the (potential) impact of social engineering on the ground
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Ansoms, A. (2011). Rwanda’s Post-Genocide Economic Reconstruction: The Mismatch between Elite Ambitions and Rural Realities. In Strauss, S. et Waldorf, L. (ed.), Reconstructing Rwanda: State Building & Human Rights after Mass Violence (p. p. 240-251). University of Wisconsin Press. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/59396