In the upcoming months we will work on the Africa project. With this project we will focus on a country in Africa, named Rwanda. With this project three subjects are involved: history, geography and economics. Our main goal s to find out why some African countries are wealthier than others. We are going to figure this out by answering three main questions. After looking at this we draw conclusions and we will compare our information to another African country and look for differences and similarities.
The country that we will investigate is Rwanda. It's a small country located in the East of Africa near the equator. In Rwanda there are living 10.537.222 inhabitants and the Gross Domestic Product/Head is 705 USD1. While another African country named Nigeria, in which 186 million inhabitants live, has a GDP/Head of 2180 USD1. How is it possible that a country with more inhabitants has a higher GDP/Head than a country with a lower number of inhabitants? We are going to figure this out.
To find the answer of this question, we will have to look at different aspects of the country.
What does the landscape of Rwanda look like? and how does this influence the economy of Rwanda?
What is the average income of a person in Rwanda? and what is the main source?
Which natural resources does Rwanda contain? What is their role in the world trade system?
How the climate in Rwanda influence the agriculture?
How does the population graph of Rwanda looks like and what does this represents?
Rwanda is a very small country located in Africa. The capital of Rwanda is Kigali. The country is landlocked, it is surrounded by Congo, Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi. The country is located near the equator:
In the centre and the west of Rwanda are a lot of mountain ranges. Besides mountains you can also find many rivers and lakes in Rwanda. Mostly you can find them in the eastern part. In total 10,6% of the country surface is covered with lakes and rivers3. But how does the landscape of Rwanda influence the economy? As already mentioned, Rwanda is a landlocked country. This has some huge disadvantages, for example Rwanda has no access to the sea therefore they have to transport everything by land which is more expensive. Also, Rwanda is highly dependent on their neighbouring countries for their external trade. If the surrounding countries have a weak and poorly maintained infrastructure it will effect the economy of Rwanda: it will make it harder to trade with its neighbouring countries. The mountain ranges makes trading even more expensive. Mountainous terrains are hard to plant crops on, it is hard to live in and it's expensive to traverse. So, the landscape clearly does influence the economy. However the economy of a country does not only depend on its landscape but also on its service sector, main source of income and Gross Domestic Product/Head.
Rwanda's economy shifted over time. For instance, in 1994 the economy of Rwanda was in a critical condition, the GDP per capita was around $416 USD. Because of the genocide, the economy of Rwanda was ruined and the infrastructure was gone. Due to this no investments were made. Still Rwanda succeeded in changing the GDP per capita from $416 to $2,090 13. The economy of Rwanda is mostly based on the agricultural sector, currently around 83% of Rwanda's population of 10.5 million inhabitants live in rural areas and more than 70% of the population still works on a farm. However, Rwanda has one of the fastest growing economy’s in Central Africa, this is mostly due the construction of new buildings, more services and the big amount of agriculture.14
Because of their few economic resources, Rwanda highly depend on their agricultural production. Rwanda produces coffee, tea, pyrethrum which is an aromatic plant that is brightly coloured, bananas, beans and potatoes.6. Their industrial products are for example, cement, small-scale beverages, soap, plastic goods, textiles and cigarettes7. Rwanda is one of the world’s largest producers of tin, tantalum, and tungsten. Rwanda has four different natural resources, which include mineral resources: gold, cassiterite (tin ore), methane which is a gas with no colour and smell that's mainly used as a fuel, and wolframite (tungsten ore). Besides these mineral resources, Rwanda also have two other natural resources: hydropower and arable land, which is land that's used to grow crops and is capable of being ploughed 20. However do they also export them? Of course, they export some of their resources. Tin is amongst the other agricultural and minerals the country exports. Gold, tungsten and methane are used for other things they produce, while tea, coffee, hides, tin, iron ore, coltan, cassiterite and wolfram are exported. Rwanda mainly exports its resources to China, Germany and the United States. As we already mentioned, lots of Rwanda's product are produced on land. To grow these products on the agricultural land a favourable climate is needed, but what is actually the climate in Rwanda?
Well, due to the relief in Rwanda the weather depends on where you are. On most places it's warm, on average 21°C4, and is there a tropical highland climate but when you go up in the mountains you will find frost and snow. The temperatures are throughout the year roughly the same, there is not really a summer and winter. There are two rainy seasons: one from February to April and one from November through January. The average rainfall is 85.7 mm per month9. These rainy seasons are important for the agriculture, otherwise the ground would be to dry. The soil in Rwanda is fertile, especially in the valleys and the volcanic soils of the north-west11. Mostly coffee and tea is cultivated from the plantations in Rwanda, because those crops grow with temperate climate and plentiful rain and sunshine5.
Now we have looked at the climate of Rwanda we are going to look at the population of Rwanda. First of all, Rwanda’s population graph has a pyramid shape, which shows the distribution of age groups of Rwanda. The graph is shaped like a pyramid, because everyone is born at the ago of zero, however, not everyone turns 90 years old. As you grow older and old you have the more chance to die. Therefore the population graph is shaped as a pyramid. Over years the population of Rwanda changed due to some events, for example at the year 1990 the population consisted of 7,235,798 inhabitants, but after 1990 this decreased to 5,928,078 in 1995. This major decrease of more than 1.3 million Rwandans was caused by the disastrous genocide, which occurred in 1994, from April till July.
Because of this event Rwanda has a young population. This is visible on the population graph of Rwanda as you can see above.
Sometimes the answer to why some countries are wealthier than other is not found by the landscape or population, but it goes back in time. It could be possible that other countries ruled over Rwanda and that this has influence on the economy nowadays in Rwanda. We will look again at different sub-questions to find this out.
Has Rwanda been colonized? If yes, by which country, why, when and how was the government formed during the colonization?
When did Rwanda decolonize? Why did they decolonize, what was the trigger and what was the process?
Does tribalism play a role in Rwanda and in which way?
Who is in power at the moment in Rwanda? And who was in power during wcolinaztion.
First Rwanda became a colony of Germany this was decided during the Berlin Conference in 1894, Rwanda became part of German East Africa. However during WOI in 1916, Rwanda was conquered by Belgium troops from Belgium-Congo. Not only Rwanda was conquered, also Burundi. These two countries were added together and formed as a mandate area which was named Ruanda-Urundi. Belgium could use Rwanda for their natural resources, so they could make profit. Belgium ruled Ruanda-Urundi as their colony, however, in fact Ruanda-Urundi is UN trust territory governed by Belgium.
From 1924 German East Africa was led by Belgium. Belgium classified people, because they thought it would be easier for them to rule. They divided them in the superior group: the Tutsis as the ruling group, they were in minority. And the Hutu to be the servants, they were in majority. The Tutsis were the best, while the Hutus were discriminated. Because of this economical and social inequalities rose. This led to higher tensions between the Tutsis and Hutu, tribal warfare between them started in 1959. In that year, 1959, a revolution started: 'Hutu Peasant Revolution', also named as 'social revolution'. This resulted in ethnic tensions and the end of Tutsis domination. Finally in 1962 Rwanda became independent of Belgium, because of the Hutus uprisings.
Then after a few years a horrible event happened, a genocide. The genocide was a major event in the history of Rwanda. The Hutus slaughtered the Tutsis and in 100 days more than 800,000 Rwandans were slaughtered. The Hutus were in the majority, however the Tutsis were seen as the elite group of the society. Even when Rwanda still had a king, the king was a Tutsi. The inequality between the ethnic groups led to tension and later on even to a genocide.
Nowadays, Rwanda is a republic with a president, who is the head of state and a multiparty democratic system. Before Rwanda was colonized, the country was a kingdom. When Belgium ruled over Rwanda, they didn't change something with the system, which made the Tutsi king seize more power. When the last Tutsi king died, Junéval Habyarimana did a coup d'etat and became president. Since then the country has been ruled by a president18.
However, is the president a good leader or does his actions cause conflicts? Or are there conflicts caused by other reasons? We will look at the following sub-questions to find this out.
How does the conflict theory apply to Rwanda?
Is there a shortage of resources in Rwanda? If yes, in which way causes this conflicts?
How does the income inequality in Rwanda looks like?
The Marx's conflict theory is the conflict between the rich and the poor because resources, status and power are unevenly distributed between social classes19. However does this conflict theory apply to Rwanda? Yes it did. In Rwanda this applies to the Hutus and the Tutsis, these two groups were fighting with each other. As already mentioned, the Tutsis were the rich ones and the Hutus the poor ones. The Tutsis had greater wealth and social status, whereas, the Hutus were discriminated. The Hutus wanted to have more equality between these two classes therefore the tensions between these two groups started to rise. Finally, this conflict even lead to the genocide where the Hutus murdered a ton of Tutsis.
Although Rwanda is developing it still suffers from some major problems, like the lack of resources. These shortages of resources developed in the 1980s. From 1984 the GINI index started to increase, partly because of this shortage. However does this shortage of resources cause conflicts? Yes, it did. First of all sometimes there is a drought on the agricultural land, so no resources an be produced. This drought finally turns into famine, which increases economic inequality. This shortage of resources worsens the economy, a bad economy will result in chaos and unrest. Finally, this could turn into a conflict. Moreover, in 1994 the terrible genocide occurred. These shortage of resources was a small cause of this horrific genocide. Although it is a small cause, it did contribute to the genocide. Rwanda's lack of resources and extreme poverty provided the breeding grounds for genocide17.
Currently Rwanda is recognized as a model of development. However, Rwanda still has the highest inequality rate in East Africa, according to a report by Oxfam12, But Rwanda's inequality is decreasing because the country made some progress, for example in their progress in access to education; every boy or girl in Rwanda can provide a full nine year basic education. However there is still lots of inequality in Rwanda, this causes a rise in poverty and threatens the economic growth. The income inequalities of Rwanda started to rose around the end of the 1980s, from then on this inequality kept increasing. These were measured with the Gini coefficient, which is used to analyse income inequality. Here is a graph of the GINI index of Rwanda:When you look at this graph, you'll notice that around the 1980s the income inequality started to increase. You can see that Rwanda has a high Gini coefficient, which means a high income inequality. However from 2005 on the Gini coefficient started to decrease, this is because of the progress of Rwanda. As I already mentioned, Rwanda has progressed in education, however life expectancy, spending on health care, literacy and gender equality have all improved too. From 2013 till 2018, Rwanda is still a rising and developing country1.
So, to look back at the main questions. The different factors that cause some African countries to be richer than others are landscape, climate, location and population. Next to that profits Rwanda mostly by exporting their products. For example in Rwanda coffee and tea, their main export products, grows in the perfect climate which can be exported and makes most profit since the agriculture sector is their biggest income source.
The colonization of Rwanda by the Germans and the Belgiums had biq consequences. Belgium had classified the society and this led to inequality and rising tensions. Finally in the end this led to the genocide. When Rwanda decolonized, the country became a republic. Since then there has not been a lot of unrest. However when there were lots of conlficts and wars in Rwanda, like the fight between the Tutsis and the Hutis, it caused lots of land to be destroyed, this is bad for the economy because they need lots of money to rebuilt this land areas. Moreover if the genocide never had happen the GDP per capita would be much higher, this again is bad for the economy. All in all the wars and conflicts in Rwanda caused the economy to deteriorate.