Rwanda the global top reformer

Large dam construction in Uganda, Vanessa Vick for the New York Times

Rwanda tops the World Bank’s list of reformers in their annual “Doing Business Report”, which measures the ease of opening and closing businesses, enforcing contracts, trading across borders and other key benckmarks used by investors to evaluate location choices. The sub-Saharan country vaulted to the 67th from the 143rd rank in the report, ahead of India, Italy and Turkey. The index ranks 183 participants.

Rwanda improved regulations that eased access to credit, simplified business formation, strengthened minority-shareholder protections and sped up trade and property registration, according the report.

This is good news for President Kagame before speaking at the U.S. Africa Business Summit early next month to attract further investment. Good news also for the country’s effort to shift from a high-dependency on foreign aid to job creation and economic development fuelled by private international capital. This effort has faced serious challenges over the past months with multimillion dollar tourism projects of Dubai World scaled down. This rolling back of private investment in the wake of the global recession hit several African economies hard, the New York Times reported last month.

Armed with the World Bank’s ‘Best Reformer” label and aided by signs of global recovery, President Kagame is likely to return from the U.S. with more ambitious investment projects for the growing East African country.