(AfDB) - The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank Group approved the mid-term review of the Country Strategy Paper (CSP) 2022-26 for Rwanda in Abidjan on 21 May 2024. The progress during the first half of the implementation period has been significant.

The CSP for Rwanda was approved by the Boards of Directors of the African Development Bank and the African Development Fund – the Bank Group’s concessional funding window – in November 2021, focused on two priority areas. The first is strengthening physical infrastructure to increase productive resources and reduce the cost of doing business, and the second is developing skills and financial capacity to boost the private sector and drive growth based on productivity.

In the first priority area, 66% of the transport sector indicators have been achieved and have contributed to reducing travel time from over three hours to less than one, improving access to markets and commercial opportunities, and reducing the cost of doing business. Around 50% of the targets have been met in the energy sector, including national access to electricity, which rose from 40.5% in 2017 to nearly 75% in December 2023. An additional 375,543 households and 2,306 connections for schools, healthcare facilities, small businesses, and national offices have benefited from grid and off-grid power connections, improving livelihoods. Similarly, around 50% of the water sector results indicators have been achieved by connecting 1.5 million more people to drinking water, improving their quality of life as a result.

All of the results indicators in the second priority area have been achieved. A total of 120 targeted specialist graduates were employed within a year of graduating and 100 sustainable digital businesses have been created by young people, helping increase revenues in the beneficiary population.

In addition, new priority studies were completed on projected growth drivers between now and 2035 and to identify top investment strategies to support the preparation of the second national transformation strategy 2024 = 2029. These studies have strengthened the dialogue on growth, private sector development and the formulation of the country’s industrial policy.

“These are reassuring results for the next stage of implementing the CSP. There are still challenges and the remaining phase of the CSP will continue to tackle them following the same objective, namely helping Rwanda to encourage the development of productive capacity to boost growth based on productivity, free up the potential of the private sector and ultimately, accelerate the country’s structural transformation,” commented Aïssa Touré-Sarr, African Development Bank Country Manager in Rwanda.

On 30 April 2024, the Bank Group’s active portfolio in Rwanda comprised 22 operations, with a total value of $1.72 billion.