{"id":30540,"date":"2016-11-23T03:16:16","date_gmt":"2016-11-23T03:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/rwanda-is-a-landlocked-country-with-few-natural\/"},"modified":"2016-11-25T02:40:41","modified_gmt":"2016-11-25T02:40:41","slug":"rwanda-is-a-landlocked-country-with-few-natural","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/rwanda-is-a-landlocked-country-with-few-natural\/","title":{"rendered":"Rwanda is a landlocked country with few natural resources. So why is China investing so heavily in it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

{It\u2019s hard not to see China\u2019s footprint wherever one goes in Rwanda. Chinese engineers have designed and built the country\u2019s tallest building, Kigali City Tower, a gleaming 20-story glass skyscraper; the building that houses Rwanda\u2019s foreign ministry; various hotels, schools, and hospitals; and 80% of the country\u2019s roads, according to a former Chinese ambassador to Rwanda. A sign on a primary school near government offices declares the school\u2019s playground \u201ca gift from China.\u201d A clinic in town offers acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine.}<\/p>\n

There are less tangible signs too. Driving through the Kigali Special Economic Zone\u2014a free-trade area on the outskirts of the capital, modeled after those that helped launch China\u2019s economic opening in the 1980s\u2014a man stopped our car to tell us that he\u2019d been learning Chinese at the local Confucius Center, a cultural institute run by China\u2019s ministry of education. He broke into song, singing in Mandarin about how much he likes learning Chinese, to the tune of \u201cHappy Birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rwanda doesn\u2019t fit the usual narrative of China\u2019s interest in Africa\u2014namely that China is only interested in Africa for its mineral wealth, expanses of arable land, and potential as a dumping ground for Chinese-made goods. Small, landlocked Rwanda has few natural resources, and with a population about half that of Beijing\u2019s, it offers a negligible new market for Chinese products.<\/p>\n

Instead, private Chinese companies and entrepreneurs are investing in property, telecoms, manufacturing, and small-scale businesses like restaurants, car import outfits, and travel agencies. Big state-owned Chinese enterprises are building much of Rwanda\u2019s roads and infrastructure, but not in exchange for oil or mining rights, as has been the case elsewhere.<\/p>\n

As such, Chinese activity in Rwanda offers one of the best counterpoints to the oft-heard criticism that African countries are falling under the yoke of yet another foreign power. \u201cRwanda is home to 26,000 square kilometers of land and a population of 12 million. What city is there to attack? What land is there to invade?\u201d a representative from the Chinese ministry of commerce in Kigali told Quartz.<\/p>\n

{{A hub for Africa}}<\/p>\n

Rwanda, which went from suffering one of history\u2019s worst genocides in 1994 to becoming one of the fastest-growing economies on the continent, wants to establish itself as the business and technological hub of Africa. By attracting more foreign investment, Rwanda also hopes to wean itself from foreign aid, which accounts for almost 40% of its annual budget.<\/p>\n

To that end, the government offers hefty tax incentives: Companies headquartered in Rwanda that invest at least $10 million are exempt from corporate income tax, while those that export at least 50% of their goods pay only 15% tax. Rwandan officials hosting Chinese trade delegations emphasize Rwanda\u2019s stability, government transparency, and business-friendly regulations\u2014it takes less than 24 hours, on average, to set up a company.<\/p>\n

\"Sanitary<\/figure>\n

Chinese businesses seem to have gotten the message. In Kigali\u2019s special economic zone, Chinese companies produce clothes, sanitary napkins, and wooden doors. A Chinese government-funded agricultural technology center to modernize Rwandan farmers is also focused on helping Chinese companies find new markets in the region. China emerged as Rwanda\u2019s largest investor (pdf) after South Africa in 2009, and though it\u2019s since fallen back to fifth place, it remains among Rwanda\u2019s top trading partners. (China does import a relatively small amount of minerals from Rwanda.)
\nSome of the most dominant Chinese companies in Africa got their start in the country. Star Times, a Chinese pay-TV provider, began its overseas efforts in Rwanda in 2008. It now rivals Africa\u2019s biggest provider, DSTV, in 30 African countries. Tecno Mobile, a Chinese cellphone manufacturer whose cheap phones are ubiquitous across the continent, also chose Rwanda as one of its earliest markets.<\/p>\n

Smaller-scale Chinese entrepreneurs are focused on the promise of Rwandan consumers. \u201cThey need everything, and in China we can make everything,\u201d says Han Kai, who imports cars from China and the Middle East, selling them to locals who can\u2019t quite afford the models imported from Japan.<\/p>\n

All this is making Rwanda something of a service and logistics hub for China-Africa trade and business, according to Norbert Haguma, a Rwandan businessman whose consultancy advises on China-Africa issues. Rwandan shipping companies have started to offer container services to the Chinese manufacturing hubs Guangzhou and Yiwu. Traders can use instant money-transfer services to send money via popular Chinese platforms like WeChat and AliPay, converting between dollars, renminbi and Rwandan francs. Last year, Haguma\u2019s company hosted a business forum that brought 150 Chinese and African businesses to Kigali.<\/p>\n

\u201cChinese activity in Rwanda can illustrate more diverse types of Chinese involvement across African countries,\u201d says Janet Eom, research manager of the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, who has done field work in Rwanda.<\/p>\n

\"Chinese<\/figure>\n

Elsewhere in Africa, Chinese investment is also becoming more diverse. Researchers Wenjie Chen and Hewai Tang, from George Washington University and Johns Hopkins University, looked at data between 1998 and 2012 from China\u2019s Ministry of Commerce\u2014all Chinese enterprises making direct foreign investments must register with the ministry. They found that among 2,000 Chinese firms in 49 African countries, the most popular sectors were services and retail, and investors had \u201cno particular preference\u201d for resource-rich countries over resource-poor ones. According to their research, more than twice as many projects were in the business services sector, compared to mining:<\/p>\n

\"A<\/figure>\n

[Rwanda is a landlocked country with few natural resources. So why is China investing so heavily in it? ->http:\/\/qz.com\/827935\/rwanda-is-a-landlocked-country-with-few-natural-resources-so-why-is-china-investing-so-heavily-in-it\/]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{It\u2019s hard not to see China\u2019s footprint wherever one goes in Rwanda. Chinese engineers have designed and built the country\u2019s tallest building, Kigali City Tower, a gleaming 20-story glass skyscraper; the building that houses Rwanda\u2019s foreign ministry; various hotels, schools, and hospitals; and 80% of the country\u2019s roads, according to a former Chinese ambassador to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[2632],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-30540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-quartz"],"bylines":[{"id":2632,"name":"Quartz","slug":"quartz","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2632,"name":"Quartz","slug":"quartz","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30540"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=30540"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=30540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}