I am in leadership to enable business people to do business and succeed- President Kagame

The president was presenting during a session on Digitalizing Emerging Markets with AliBaba Group Executive Chairman, Jack Ma on the Second day of the World Economic Forum 2019.

“In most of what we do, there is a need for sustainability and predictability,” Kagame told the Davos 2019 audience. “We have to do what we have to do and believe it works.”

Alibaba Group and the government of Rwanda have agreed to multiple bilateral initiatives to promote Rwanda’s economy through increased cross-border trade, capacity building, and others. Among the agreements is the Electronic World Trade Platform (eWTP), an initiative for public-private dialogue to foster a more effective and efficient policy and business environment for cross border electronic trade (eTrade) development.

At that, President Kagame noted that the platform is a special, exciting partnership bringing together marginalized people in society to connect directly with the consumers.

“eWTP has democratized benefits. If you look at the number of people who will benefit; young entrepreneurs and farmers who are involved in coffee businesses, it is all inclusive”
Alibaba Group Executive Chairman, Jack Ma, echoed his remarks, observing that the initiative is a pioneering methodology for Globalization.

“We believe in globalization, but many don’t believe in it because it is not inclusive. How can we improve it? In the last 20 years, globalization was controlled by 60,000 companies worldwide, imagine if we could expand that to 60 million businesses.” Ma said
According to Jack Ma, eWTP is about the “Four T’s”: Training, Trade, Technology, and Tourism.

The Electronic World Trade Platform is a private sector driven initiative and will be implemented in other countries after its debut in Rwanda. “We want to convince countries where the government has the wisdom and the courage to support small business… that’s the vision.”

At date, farmers in Rwanda are already selling coffee directly through the platform, which facilitates tariff-free trade for transactions of less than US$1 million. Coffee is already being sold through this platform to Chinese customers, farmers were getting around $8 dollars per kilogram, they are now getting $12 per kilogram.