President Paul Kagame has said that investment in the development of human capital remain a top priority for Rwanda in a bid to empower citizens and unleash human freedoms.

Kagame was speaking at the World Bank Human Capital Summit in Washington DC as part of the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund Annual meeting.

The president said that investment in human capital is a precondition of high income growth and prosperity.

Continuously developing human capital through investment in healthcare, education and creativity, he said is with the aim of turning citizens into individuals with the ability to think and act for themselves and for the benefit of their communities.

"Human capital is without doubt the driver of high-income growth and the foundation of prosperity. This is not an abstraction. We are talking about people in real terms….. By investing in health, education, and creativity, we turn our people into individuals who have the ability to think and act, not just for themselves but also for the benefit of their communities,” he said.

It is that reasoning that Kagame said drives Rwanda to aim beyond elimination of extreme poverty to achieve prosperity and well-being for everyone.

"Unleashing human freedom and ability is a force multiplier that creates limitless potential. For that reason, I would like to challenge us all not to limit our ambitions to "eliminating extreme poverty”. That just doesn’t sound good enough. Our aim is prosperity and well-being for everyone. That is the essence of what keeps bringing us together here, time after time,” he said.

In Rwanda’s approach, government’s role in developing human capital is beyond provision of funds as it has involved ensuring a secure, stable environment.

"Government does not just provide funds, it also creates public goods through an environment of security, stability, policy predictability, and the rule of law,” the head of state said.

Filling the void of human capital created in pre-genocide Rwanda, Kagame said had enabled the country to achieve security and stability over the last 23 years.

"Twenty-three years ago, as you know, Rwanda was utterly devastated. It is no accident that human capital was a low priority in the years before the Genocide. As we worked to rebuild the nation, we had no choice but to put our people at the centre of our strategy. It was simply a question of security and survival,” the president said.

Among the top investments and efforts in development of human capital has been through ensuring access to quality education for all citizens as well as universal healthcare coverage.

Due to these efforts, over 90,000 Rwandans complete tertiary education annually while national healthcare insurance covers close to 90 per cent of the population.

"In the decades before 1994, access to secondary and higher education was a political favour subject to ethnic quotas. The country produced only about 2,000 university graduates in that period. Today, around 90,000 Rwandans complete tertiary education every year. Our national health insurance programme covers nearly 90 per cent of Rwandans, and tens of thousands of volunteer Community Health Workers are deployed across the country,” he told the audience.

This has consequently seen an 80 per cent reduction in maternal mortality and a 70 per cent reduction in infant and child mortality since the year 2000.

The government has also made equality of access and opportunity for girls and women in schools, in the workplace, and in front of the law, a cross cutting requirement further ensuring economic resilience.

Other efforts have been through rollout of broadband and expansion of technical and vocational education to ensure relevance to the labour market needs.

Other efforts by the government and stakeholders have involved setting up sector working groups constituting national agencies to coordinate Early Childhood Development (ECD) programme focused on nutrition, sanitation, and pre-school education.

As a result, the rate of stunting has dropped drastically from over half of children in 2010 to closer to one-third today with targets of reducing it further to 15 per cent by 2020.

Kagame commended the partnership between the World Bank Group and the government developing human capital saying that with the joint efforts there is optimism that targets will be achieved.

"Rwanda still has a long way to go to reach high-income status. Given our starting point, we are accustomed to difficult journeys, so there is no doubt that eventually we will get there. But we cannot derive full benefit from our natural resources or seize the opportunities of globalisation without first making the inherent potential of our people a reality,” he added.

World Bank President Dr. Jim Yong Kim called on countries to invest in their citizens, saying that there was evidence that it would lead to a high Gross Domestic Production.

Kagame spoke alongside other leaders including World Bank President Dr. Jim Yong Kim and Cote d’Ivoire Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly among others.