The government of Rwanda and the World Bank on Saturday commemorated 60 years of one of the most fruitful collaborations that has been seen in the country through some of the direst moments, including building back after the devastating 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, The New Times, Rwanda鈥檚 largest daily newspaper reported.
Uzziel Ndagijimana, the minister for Finance and Economic Planning, and Keith Hansen, the World Bank country director, earlier, on Friday, Sept. 29, inaugurated a multimedia photo exhibition depicting Rwanda鈥檚 development story over the past six decades and joined a conference to reflect on 60 years of partnership.
Rwanda became a member of the World Bank on September 30, 1963.
Since then, the bank has provided about $8.2 billion in support of different development programs in Rwanda, including human capital, infrastructure, agriculture, resilience, and private sector development. Over the last decade, one million people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty, capitalizing on a rapidly improving agriculture sector in which the International Development Association (IDA) was proud to make substantial investments.
鈥淲orld Bank has had the honor and privilege of accompanying Rwanda in its exceptional journey of building transformational infrastructures and setting up modern institutions that led to one of the most impressive growth performances in the World in recent decades,鈥 said Hansen, country director for Rwanda, Kenya, Somalia, and Uganda.
鈥淐ontinuing Rwanda鈥檚 remarkable success requires accelerated efforts and collaboration to rebalance its economy away from public investment toward greater reliance on private investment, and the World Bank is committed to continuing supporting the government to attain her targeted sustainable development goals.鈥
Rwanda tells the world a remarkable story of poverty reduction and development. It has been one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, having generated persistent high growth averaging 7.2% per annum between 2000 to 2019.
Poverty declined from 58.9% in 2000 to 38.2% 2016, and inequality reduced with the Gini coefficient of 0.51 in 2000 to 0.43 in 2016. The Gini coefficient is an index for the degree of inequality in the distribution of income or wealth, used to estimate how far a country’s wealth or income distribution deviates from an equal distribution.