Rwanda

In the first half of 2018, the economy continued to expand at a brisk pace, well on track for Rwanda to achieve 7.2 percent growth in 2018. GDP growth was 8.6 percent, following 9.3 percent growth in the second half of 2017. Growth in production was again broad-based. As it continued to recover from recent droughts, agriculture expanded by 7.6 percent. Industry has also regained momentum as large construction projects resumed and food processing was strong. Growth in services was a healthy 8.7 percent. On demand side, investments were the main driver of growth.

The Republic of Rwanda is a relatively small country located in Central Africa with a population of approximately 10 million people, making it one of the more densely populated countries in the world. The current government is taking positive steps to helps the country emerge from its tragic past, and aims to promote reconciliation and unity among all Rwandese and forbids any political activity or discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or relation.

The purpose of this report is to show how development issues and policy initiatives shaped the design and structure of the science, technology, and innovation (STI) capacity-building program that eventually emerged from the partnership between the Government of Rwanda and the World Bank.

Civil war, and genocide in particular, are among the most destructive of social phenomena, especially for children of school-going age. In Rwanda school enrollment trends suggest that the school system recovered quickly after 1994, but these numbers do not tell the full story. Two cross-sectional household surveys collected before and after the genocide are used to compare children in the same age group who were and were not exposed to the genocide - and their educational outcomes are substantially different.

This short country report, a result of larger Information for Development Program (infoDev) - supported survey of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in education in Africa, provides a general overview of current activities and issues related to ICT use in education in the country. ICT is central to Rwanda's Vision for 2020, and ICT in education is one of the core pillars of the country's national information and communications infrastructure policy and plan, adopted in 2000.

This paper sets the case of Rwanda's male youth within the larger context of Africa's urbanization and burgeoning youth population. It investigates the pervasive images of male urban youth as a menace to Africa's development and its primary source of instability. It then turns to the Rwandan case, examining the desperate conditions its young men (and women) faced before the civil war (1990-94) and 1994 genocide, as well as their experience of it. It draws on field interviews with Rwandan youth to consider the situation male youth face in the postwar, post-genocide era.

The paper examines wage and income differences between men and women in Rwanda, to determine the extent to which observed patters are due to differences in education and expertise. It examines this issue with particular attention to the agriculture and service sectors which together constitute roughly 80 percent of GDP and have been the key sectors of growth, over the past decade. The paper finds that a significant portion of workers are engaged in unpaid work, and women appear to be over represented in this category.