The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) is committed to help Rwanda realise its plans to develop industries, the body’s top leader has said.

Li Yong, the UNIDO director-general, delivered the message, yesterday, in Kigali after meeting President Paul Kagame at Village Urugwiro.

The official completed a two-day visit in the country yesterday, a trip that helped him to understand the country’s efforts for industrialisation and commit his organisation’s support to the sector.

"I highly commend great achievements made under his (Kagame’s) leadership for this country and its people. We, at UNIDO, would like to join this new momentum to move the country ahead with growth,” Li said.

Under Rwanda’s second Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EDPRS II), the government has targeted activities in the industrial sector—such as manufacturing, construction, and mining— to contribute 20 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 2018.

Officials say the sector needs to grow at an annual rate of 14 per cent to achieve that target, which means that every support to develop it is welcome.

But the sector has been steadily growing along with the country’s fast growing economy, contributing 15 per cent of GDP by the first quarter of 2015 and remaining the third biggest contributor to the country’s growth after services and agriculture.

Now UNIDO, which has supported Rwanda in the past to design industrialisation policies and build capacities in that area, wants to scale up its efforts under its mandate to promote inclusive and sustainable industry development.

On Wednesday, Li signed an agreement with the Rwandan government that will see UNIDO contribute to Rwanda’s industrial sector over the next five years.

The agency’s interventions will mainly focus on five areas, including industrial policy and support to special economic zones, agro-value addition and food processing, human capital for industrialisation and economic transformation, environment management, as well as energy development.

"We would like to continue our support to this country in industrial development,” Li told journalists at Village Urugwiro, explaining that his discussions with President Kagame helped him to explain UNIDO’s new programme in Rwanda.

He also said the organisation wants to support Africa’s industrialisation in general, a plan that requires support from African leaders.

"President Kagame gave us strong support for this process,” he said of the broader industrialisation plan for Africa.

The Minister for Trade and Industry, François Kanimba, said a lot was expected from UNIDO’s support, especially in terms of resources mobilisation and capacity building.

"There is a lot that UNIDO experts can do to help us realise our plans for industrialisation. They know a lot of things; they know how industrialisation was able to happen in developed countries. They can give us advice on how to design policies to develop our industries and how to attract investors and other development partners,” he said.

In the past 20 years, UNIDO’s programmes in Rwanda focused on private sector promotion at three levels of interventions, including recovery of manufacturing capacity through capacity building for enterprise rehabilitation and restructuring, capacity-building programme pertaining for industrial policy formulation, and developing monitoring and evaluation systems in industrial sector.

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