By David Himbara
Foreign Investment to Rwanda Collapsed in 2020, While Personal Remittances Did Not Decline As Sharply. The newly published World Bank data for 2020 paints a pathetic picture of General Paul Kagame’s Singapore of Africa that was supposed to become a middle-Income economy by 2020, per Vision 2020. Rwanda’s GDP per capita is US$797.9, confirming its low-income status – the only country poorer in East Africa is Burundi at US$274.
Rwanda is poorer than the failed state of Haiti, whose GDP per capita is US$1,176.8. Meanwhile, foreign direct investment to Rwanda collapsed to US$135 million in 2020 from US$354 million in 2019. The good news is that money sent home by the Rwandan diaspora did not decline as sharply. Personal remittances to Rwanda dropped from US$260.7 million in 2019 to US$241 million in 2020. Stay tuned.