By David Himbara
In 2016, General Paul Kagame gave 30 hectares of land outside Kigali to Dubai Ports World (DPW), a United Arab Emirates firm, to construct and manage a dry port. The dry port will enable trucks to deposit or pick up their containers in real-time as opposed to waiting for months for assets clearance. That’s good news.
But here is bad news. The investors in dry port believed that Rwanda would serve as a window to reach the Great Lakes region markets. That is easier said than done.
Kagame locked Rwanda’s busiest border crossing that handles most of its regional and global trade on February 27, 2019.
That is the Gatuna crossing at the common border with Uganda through which Rwanda trades regionally and internationally. It is through Uganda Gatuna that Rwandan trade mostly accesses the seaport of Mombasa, Kenya. Kagame is no doubt one of the most self-defeating rulers on planet earth.
