Rwanda attracted investment commitments worth $2.5 billion in 2023, a 50 per cent increase compared to $1.6 billion recorded in 2022, the latest annual report from the Rwanda Development Board (RDB) shows.

The commitments were made mainly by investors from India, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Germany, Mozambique, Nigeria, China, Eritrea, Mauritius, as well as domestic investors.

These investment commitments could transform almost every field of the economy – from real estate, manufacturing, the creative industry, to the hospitality, financial services, and agro-processing sectors.

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These trends are proof that Rwanda remains a preferable destination for foreign investors even as countries struggle to shore up their economies in the face of the post-COVID19 pandemic effects, twin wars in Ukraine and Palestine, and rising inflationary pressures.

However, as Rwanda continues to attract investors, authorities should be aware of overpromising and under delivering investors. The investors make promises that are sometimes empty or they know too well that they won’t deliver.

There are several examples of such investors.

AB Minerals Corporation, a Canadian mining firm, promised to build Africa’s first coltan separation plant in Rwanda in 2016. The company failed to start the project and disappeared.

Kenyan-owned firm DN International tricked people into putting down payments for a residential housing project. They were empty promises. Apex Biotech, another Bangladeshi-owned firm, said it would set up Rwanda’s first plant for drugs. Those plans never came to life.

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It is one thing to entice investors, but it is another thing to make sure that they invest as promised. That means exercising ultimate due diligence and enforcing checks and balances.

Investors usually overpromise because they anticipate they will benefit from a host of incentives that the government put in place. They will overstate their projections and inflate their metrics and use any tactic to win these benefits.

There is nothing wrong with making projections about a product or project, but lack of transparency about your assumptions, business model, and path to execution is where the problem is.

Authorities should know this better because failure to do that amounts to wasting taxpayers’ money, which investors use every tactic to benefit from in the form of incentives.