Africa's Singapore

THE conference room resembles an old “Star Trek” set, with swivel chairs, laptops on desks and headsets that switch between Kinyarwanda and other tongues. Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president, sits in the captain’s chair. His technocratic ministers sit nearby. When the talk turns to business, Mr Kagame becomes animated. It is his passion—he says he reads business case studies in bed. He wants to turn Rwanda into the Singapore of central Africa. He is nothing if not ambitious.Rwanda is best known for the genocide that claimed at least 500,000 lives in 1994. It has been peaceful since then, but lacks nearly all of Singapore’s advantages. Singapore has the world’s busiest port; Rwanda is landlocked. Singapore has one of the world’s best-educated populations; Rwanda’s middle class was butchered in 1994. Singapore is a gateway to China; Rwanda’s neighbours are “less than ideal”, as a recent report from the Legatum Institute, a British think-tank, put it. Uganda is corrupt; Burundi a basket-case; Congo worse.Yet Rwanda has one huge advantage: the rule of law. No African country has done more to curb corruption. Ministers have been jailed for it. Transparency International, a watchdog, reckons Rwanda is less graft-ridden than Greece or Italy (though companies owned by the ruling party play an outsized role in the economy). “I have never paid a bribe and I don’t know anyone who has had to pay a bribe,” says Josh Ruxin, one of the owners of Heaven, a restaurant in Kigali, the capital. [Source]