President Paul Kagame discussed Rwanda’s socio-economic transformation journey, highlighting efforts in creating an enabling business environment, electrification progress, rule of law, and promoting gender equality. This was during a fireside chat, in Singapore, on September 19, at the Milken Asia Summit, moderated by Richard Ditizio, the Milken Institute CEO.

The excerpts:

I want to start with Rwanda’s role on the African continent and on the world stage. Rwanda was recently ranked number one in continental Africa on the ease of doing business index, a remarkable rise of 100 spots in that ranking. What do you think two or three of the most important factors have been in Rwanda’s ascendancy as a place to do business? And which roadblocks did you have to remove in order to have that breakthrough?

We have had a tragic history. Rwanda had that, but we have left that behind us and for us to be moving forward successfully we had to make choices, policy choices, if you will. But it starts with mobilising everybody in the country to understand why some of those choices are the ones we have to adopt. And one of the things we had to do was to look at ...I mean, things just can’t be addressed by politics.

Politics is a very good thing but in as far as politics allows the right environment for other things to happen and that’s how we came to embrace doing business and attracting investment... Therefore, we had to figure out how best can we can attract investments TO our country and allow our own citizens to thrive off of that and do businesses as they should. And we came down to a couple of things. In doing business, how do you do it less costly? We created an environment in which people can invest, do business comfortably, securely, and so on and so forth. And that also has to also connect with the wider market. And one of the things we considered was how do we allow freedom of movement not only within the country, of course but, even more importantly, across the region and our continent.

But, on the first one, how do people who come in to invest from outside, how do they repatriate their dividends if they have to? But, overall, there has to be clear governance that allows stability so that people doing business don’t have to worry about many other things that have nothing to with the actual doing business.

So, the constraints, of course, have been the fact that, previously, we have had, in our country a long history of sort of dysfunction. And a country divided. So, we had to get people used to this, and to understand it, to be part of it, that we can create a new environment that everybody could come together benefit from. So, these are some of the things that we considered.

One thing that’s also been remarkable in the success of Rwanda is the speed of electrification. in 2009, only six percent of Rwandans had households that access to electricity consistently, and this year, that number has risen to 75 percent of all Rwandan households. How did you do that and how did you fund it in order for that to happen so quickly?

Well, one thing leads to another once you’ve got started on the right footing. Of course, government invests in that. We invest in other things but we prioritize infrastructure, energy infrastructure for that matter, technology, and many other things, and invest in development of skills of our population, and so on. In all this, we found that energy infrastructure is very important. It enables everything else to happen.

So, the financing of that came from government [and] from partners. We have partners in development who have asked us to indicate our priorities and this has attracted a lot of investments in the sense that because of what we earlier talked about, we have created a predictable environment. When people put their money in Rwanda, the expected returns actually happen and sometimes even exceed what people were expecting. That attracts more partnerships and flow of investments from these partners. And we have seen that it benefits everyone. And in fact, those investments have been useful but also, the returns are very good.

The scale of that investment is also astonishing. Rwanda has increased more than 50 times what FDI used to be, into the country. Because government can’t do everything, give us your thoughts on how you think about partnering with the private sector on things like digitization, [and] broadband, for Rwanda’s future.

Government can’t do much really. That’s why private partnership and engagements is absolutely necessary. And let me, by this, also invite the friends and colleagues here in the audience to look at what they can do in Rwanda and beyond, across our continent.

To begin with, let me give you a couple of partnerships we have had with businesses, even starting with you here in Singapore. We have notable, let’s say, two companies, one called CrimsonLogic which has partnered with our country and created a digital platform called Irembo on which different services are delivered to the citizens and others beyond.

Another one is called Surbana Jurong which has partnered with our country to draw a masterplan for the development of our capital city, Kigali, and they are now involved in building Kigali Innovation City.

These are the very significant things that private entities can do best, and especially even more when they partner with a government that is interested. And we have partnered with many other groups to develop the Kigali International Financial Centre which is developing quite well. And more people, because of that background; the stability, rule of law, the predictable environment, the ease of doing business, have been capitalized to attract more people to come and invest in Rwanda and work with us and work even through Rwanda to other parts of the continent.

The rule of law has been such an important factor of the success realised here in Singapore and around the globe yet in some countries today, the judiciary is under attack or its impartiality is being questioned. How has the system worked in Rwanda? And what can other countries take from your example?

For us, we learn a lot from our history, from other people and from different experiences. Obviously, and inevitably, there are all kinds of problems across the world. We try and shape our own world in Rwanda, bearing in mind and trying to learn from those mistakes that are made across the world.

We make sure we insist on stabilizing our situation, and openly, and freely engaging with the rest of the world. Based on the choices we have made, we tend to concentrate on what is likely to work for us and if there are other people who have like minds, we can work together.

If we find that other things are working well elsewhere and we can learn from that, we don’t hesitate to ask to work with those people. But, otherwise, if you want to look at the problems across the world, you’d just lose yourself in that.

Rwanda had set a goal of universal health coverage in 1999 and today, has the highest health insurance coverage across the continent of Africa. Tell us; what are some of the innovations that were necessary to effect that and how do you see the future of ongoing health coverage in the country?

Some of these good things you are referring to, again, based on the choices we have made and how accountable we hold ourselves and each other, don’t happen at a very high cost. But it’s about tapping into every individual’s possibilities and involvement. This is what we do. For example, we have people in the health sector who, really more or less work voluntarily, to a tune of now between 50,000 and 60,000 people across the country who are involved as health care givers. After minimum training, they help people in the rural areas. But we have also invested in the healthcare system in our country from high levels to lower levels of districts including the remotest rural areas to provide services, and those people are involved to make things happen.

It’s about being very practical for some of the things we have decided to do, and involving people who, first of all, understand the benefits that accrue to them and then having been mobilized and they do things with the desire to actually succeed...

I would like to get some of your insights on how you think about governance and government in Rwanda. Rwanda is recognised as a leader in gender equality and women’s empowerment. Just to contrast the two; over 60 percent of the parliament in Rwanda are women, compared to my country, the United States, where only 28 percent of the House of Representatives are women and 25 percent of the Senate. In fact, the House of Representatives in the United States didn’t even have a ladies’ room until 2011. How did you get to such a gender parity in Rwanda and why is that important as you think of the future stability of the country?

Well, we have been realistic from the beginning and when we are looking at the whole population, we are looking at everybody, irrespective of their gender. Not only numbers but also in terms of rights, whether it is education, whether it access to whatever we want our people to have access to, we are looking at everybody. We are not looking at the gender or any other background that creates a divide.

We have had enough of the divide in our history, and you are aware of even the tragic part of that. So, we learned our lessons to make sure we increasingly bring our people together, irrespective of their background, or even gender. And that’s where it stems from.

So, women in Rwanda now have access to education, as much their male counterparts. This was not the case before. And we have also reaped the benefits of that. Nearly 52 percent of our population are women. So, I don’t know how intelligent any person would be to exclude over 50 percent of your population.

Governance is an issue of rights, an issue of accountability. You avoid some of the things you know that are going to undermine you.

In the case of governance, we fight corruption because we realised that a lot of resources that would have gone into health, into or food security or education, end up in few people’s hands unfairly. So, we’ve created an environment where people who get involved in that will understand that it’s not a good thing to get involved in, especially when you are caught. So, it’s important. It’s justice. It’s an issue of rights. It’s beneficial to everyone. So, we take this seriously.

By the way, our population; 35 years [of age] and below, are 74 percent. These are young people mainly. We’ve made sure that as they grow up and take these responsibilities, they really come from this background and understand issues of accountability and governance and the benefits that accrue to that.

I am sure that most people here are aware of the history and tragedy in 1994 Rwanda [the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi]. How did that change you as a person, looking back 30 years now, and how does it change you as a leader today?

It’s very broad but let me say one thing. Rwanda has gone through many difficulties and at a personal level, ...my family, we became refugees when I was four years old and stayed in a refugee camp for slightly over two decades. Then, later on, of course, the lessons of our own tragic 1994 genocide, because of the division that was there...

But the lessons from that and which shaped me, or informed me, and many others. It’s not just me. In a situation like that, every individual, in a way, you have to make personal, even informed, decisions. Either, you give up and break, and that’s the end of you, or, you make the choice of saying, ‘I am going to stand up to this. I am going to give it a fight.’ That I have in me [the choice] to survive and maybe to make progress. At a personal level, that happened. And I know it’s not just me. It’s many in our country. We were faced with individual choices. Do you give up and die? Or, do you die fighting?

So, today, I am President. I never thought [or] even lived with the thought to be President. It just happened and when it came, I embraced it. But it’s not what I was fighting for. In our [liberation] struggle, I was fighting for my rights [and the rights] to my country and I was asking myself questions.

Later on, when you are in a place like mine, and you have responsibility, again it helps to keep reflecting. Would you be the same person to make the same mistakes that people made that made you a refugee or led to loss of lives of so many, and so on and so forth, or you really want to do your best humanly possible to feel satisfied that you’re doing the right thing for yourself but also putting yourself in the shoes of many others.

It’s what goes in the minds. At least it does in my mind, whenever I am going about my responsibilities. I am a good student of history.

The median age of the population of Rwanda is just below 20, which means more than half the people weren’t even alive in 1994. What is your greatest hope for them and the future of Rwanda?

My hope is that the investments they have made, and the country has made in them, will propel them to a better future and better lives than those of our age have lived. And of course, every day, we talk to them, we have conversations. We always tell them [that] nothing [is]to be taken for granted. They have, really, to think about what they want to achieve. But I am looking at the progress being made. I think there is a bright future and wish prosperity to all our people.

Looking at the progress made, year in year out, I think it is achievable, much as it is easy to destroy. Our history really gives two lessons. One is what human beings can do that is terrible, including self-destruction.

But also, there is another side. When we recover from all this, that human beings actually have in them the better side that can also move them to a good future that they actually deserve.

For us, in Rwanda, we are between these two things. And, as much as we can embrace this second one which works towards prosperity, so much the better. And I think the young people today who we talk to every time and invest in, even as the country, we hope they can learn a lasting lesson from all this.