While Rwanda charts a clear path forward, Kenya is getting it all wrong

Kigali Convention Centre at night on cloudy evening. The facility is designed to host a variety of events and is a top attraction in the city. [iStockphoto]

This week I found myself in Kigali, often referred to as the city on the hills. It has been almost a decade since the last time I was there in 2018. Coming from Nairobi, one of the unmistakable things that a visitor quickly notices in Kigali is the discernible order and greenery.

Yes, traffic slows down there at times and there are as many boda boda riders as they are in Nairobi, but rules are rules in Rwanda. The streets are clean and their markets orderly unlike heaps of garbage at various stages of decay that are a common scenes in Kenyan urban and peri-urban areas.

A common defence that I have often heard when anyone attempts to draw comparisons between Kenya’s chaotic city life and that of Kigali is that Rwanda is a small country to compare with. Others argue that the countryside of Rwanda is a big contrast to the city of Kigali.

Now that I have experienced Kigali almost a decade apart, in today’s article, we explore why authorities in Nairobi must wake up from their slumber and be seized of the shifting socio-economic dynamics in the region if Kenya is to remain competitive.

Kenya and Rwanda are indeed worlds apart in terms of their economic size and household income levels. Kenya’s nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is about 10 times at $147 billion (about Sh19 trillion) compared to that of Rwanda, estimated at $14.7 billion (Sh1.9 trillion) for 2026. The GDP of Nairobi City alone  is estimated at double that of the entire economy of Rwanda. GDP per capita for Kenya is roughly double that of Rwanda.

The disparities between the two economies are easily observable at the ports of entry, looking at passenger and air traffic alone. At my departure to Kigali on Sunday early morning, Terminal one was packed to capacity with hundreds of passengers heading to various destinations. On the return trip on Thursday night, the passport control section was again full from several international arrivals and hundreds others on flight transfers.

In contrast, Kenya Airways was the only arrival at around 8 am local time in Kigali at the time we landed. The other planes on ground at that time were mainly Rwanda’s national carrier, Rwanda Air. On departure on Thursday late evening, only our flight and another to Brussels via Kampala were on schedule around 8 pm hours local time. Simply put, if the two ports of entry, Kigali International Airport and Jomo Kenyatta International Airports are representative of the scale of economic activities for the two countries, then

However, economic history teaches us that for an economy to remain competitive into the long run, both the hardware and software must be right and sustained. This is where our goose gets cooked for Kenya. Developmental history is replete with economic giants of yester years that pale formerly very disadvantaged economies. A good example is Kenya and Singapore in 1967.

While our leaders today shout the Singapore dream, they are economical with the truth of our shared history. They conveniently ignore the fact that authorities from Singapore came to benchmark and learn from us in the late 1960s.

Today, the nominal GDP of Singapore is estimated at $606.23 billion, about 4.1 times that of Kenya. For the naysayers, the geographic size of Singapore is only slightly larger than that Nairobi City County.

That explains why arguments of those who deny comparatives with smaller country’s that have gotten right both the hardware and software of growth as manifest nonsense. It is the same things that propelled Singapore into a first world economy that Rwanda seems to be doing right today, and that Kenya is doing wrong.

Let’s dive deeper into the right things that drive growth. First, orderliness in an economy is a primary indicator of a country that is not only governed by rule of law, but where her citizens commit to play by the rules and dictates of the laws they have set for themselves.

For example, the moment a pedestrian steps into a zebra crossing in Kigali, every motorists or boda boda rider stops to let you cross, even where there are no traffic lights. Something else you learn quickly in Kigali is that the city’s trees are a sacred national infrastructure that no one dares touch. The road infrastructure furniture, and drainage system are strategic edifices of their national security and development.

In geo-economics, global capital follows order not chaos. Rule of law is a critical engine oil to economic growth. No investor desires to pump billions of dollars in an economic environment that does not guarantee property rights or provide an efficient judicial and dispute resolution mechanism. A business environment where everything and anything is bargainable or has an under the table price is extremely toxic to long-term capital investments.

Rwandese authorities seem to understand this very well. We can argue about their model of democracy, but investors, no matter how small are treated with dignity and facilitated to do business. In 2018 when I was first there, business permits were approved in under six hours. That standard still remains almost a decade later. That signifies predictability and order.

That would explain why there are many Kenyan brands that dominate in Rwanda in various sectors including banking, oil marketing, media, consultancy services, and small scale businesses. You will easily be referred to the Wang’ombe Nyama Choma place while in Kigali if you are a Kenyan.

Secondly is on security and hospitality. You do not need to check on your back while in Kigali. In the hotel I was in, there never was any need to look for someone to close our conference room so that our laptops or wallets are not stolen when we took our health breaks.  

On the check-out day, my bag was never tagged when I dropped it at the reception for collection later in the evening. I was told just to open a room next to the reception desk and drop it there. No one checked which bag I picked when passed by later to collect it.

My conference and residential hotel facilities were different in ranking, but the security guarantees were the same. Such basic safety guarantees cannot happen even in a five-star facility in Nairobi.

That explains why President Paul Kagame often drives himself within the country like any other ordinary citizen.

The fact that ordinary economic activities have to be stopped for even a government minister or member of parliament to move around in Nairobi speaks volumes of the rotten system cannibalising our collective future.

Finally and more importantly, you never get to hear of billions of taxpayers’ money walking out of public coffers each day in Kigali. In Nairobi it is the norm rather than the exception.

Multibillion scandals have dominated newspaper headlines for the past five decades. The automatic ticket to the a billionaire club in Kenya is not enterprise, but to win any political seat from Member of County Assembly to the President or secure senior government appointment slot.

While we bleed our public coffers with plunder, the Rwandese have grown their economy by close to ten per cent on average since 2004.

An economy where it is the political leaders and senior public officials who are contractors for any public project or tender for supplies, can only deliver one sure outcome: gross misallocation of capital and its consequent mediocrity.

A country where thieves in expensive suits are the rulers is an economy running on malware, it is doomed ab initio!