The ease to invest in Rwanda is a fact that can greatly entice Japanese companies to invest in the country, Kenji Yamada, Japan’s parliamentary vice minister for foreign affairs has said.

The official is in the country to attend the Africa CEOs Forum which started on Monday in Kigali bringing together over 1800 business leaders, top politicians and experts from different countries within and outside Africa.

He came to Rwanda accompanied by a high level delegation of senior executives from 13 top Japanese companies including globally renowned car makers Toyota, Nissan, and Mitsubishi.

According to Takayuki Miyashita, the Japanese Ambassador to Rwanda, the vice minister came to the country among other things to interact with African business leaders, as well as check on the reality of Rwanda’s business atmosphere especially in regard to the ease of doing business where Rwanda has been ranked second in Africa, with a steadily growing GDP per capita.

"The Africa CEOs Forum is a good occasion to meet the business people of Africa and get to know what is happening in Rwanda and Africa by interacting with the CEOs. It is a good chance to listen to them,” said Ambassador Miyashita.

In an interview, Vice Minister Yamada said that the investment environment in the country is good enough to attract investors from Japan.

"One of the factors to attract investment from Japanese companies is the fact that Rwanda is the second easiest country to invest in Africa. To announce this fact to Japanese companies will be one factor to promote investment from Japanese companies to Rwanda,” he said.

"As the government of Japan we want to support the private sector of Japan to reinforce investment to Rwanda. We have already been contributing to the development of infrastructure and human resource,” he added.

For the past four years, Japanese companies with presence in Rwanda have increased from three to 25 currently.

Yamada said that the increase of Japanese companies in Rwanda to 25 in four years is supported by the country’s improvement of the investment environment and its communication environment based on ICT strategies and human resource development.

All these are relatively small companies, and according to Ambassador Miyashita, the big ones are waiting for their chance.

Japan has established an initiative to promote trade and investment in Africa. 

According to Yamada, in the last ten years, 200 Japanese companies visited 24 African countries. Last year, 39 companies visited African countries Rwanda where they met with president Kagame.

In 2012 about 560 Japanese companies were in Africa, but at the end of 2017, they increased to 800