Rwanda Removes Work Permit Rules

East African nation aims to attract skilled expatriates and entrepreuners to help in country’s growth...

In a bid to attract a high calibre workforce, Rwanda has removed work permit requirements and employment restrictions for foreigners wanting to work there. The country hopes to gain entrepreneurs who can provide value addition to agricultural products, develop tourism into dynamic clusters that generate wealth, and utilize ICT to create export-oriented service industries.

The country is moving from agricultural subsistence towards using ICT to build a knowledge based economy. To achieve this, the government has pledged to have high speed broadband internet connectivity carried by fibre-optic cables in all schools in the next two years.

Rwanda which has two fibre -optic rings around Kigali, and a cable being laid across the country envisions being the information-technology hub for the resource rich nations of Eastern and Central Africa. Spending $65 million on broadband is part of it’s 20-year technology strategy to become a high tech service economy.

Rwanda’s manufacturing sector contributes about 20% of GDP and is dominated by the production of import substitutes for internal consumption. The larger enterprises produce beer, soft drinks, cigarettes, hoes, wheelbarrows, soap, cement, mattresses, plastic pipe, roofing materials, textiles, and bottled water.

Rwanda is one of the least urbanised countries in Africa, and has one of the highest rural population density on the African continent. As a result, an increasing portion of domestic retail and wholesale trade is controlled predominantly by Asian businessmen of Ugandan origin. The main imports into Rwanda are foodstuffs, machinery, auto spare parts and equipment, steel, petroleum products, and construction materials; the principal exports are coffee, tea, hides, casseritite, wolframite, and pyrethrum.