No, our country is not particularly dangerous. This could have been your response as a senior government official at the recently concluded World Economic Forum in Davos. The question having been asked pertains to the security in your country. You fervently deny that security is a problem for investors. The questioner insists, citing several statistics. You persist in your line of defence. Eventually, the inquisitor states that his business is security and his company had been interested in investing in your country. What do you say as the senior government official in response, having just denied security concerns in your country? The official in question recounted this real life story at an investment conference in New York. His point was that, sometimes, we are quick to try to minimise the “negative” stories about our African countries. With good reason. But, in doing so, we can miss out on an opportunity. Just such an opportunity seems to have presented itself in Rwanda. The government has come up with regulations aimed at curbing fire hazards in the country. In 2014 fire outbreaks were reported as the most frequently occurring disasters and, most recently, on Wednesday fire gutted a public service omnibus, and thank God, all the 30 passengers escaped unhurt. The new guidelines are seen as potential investment opportunities for companies interested in fire safety management, equipment installation and fire preparedness assessment. Buildings are required to have basics such as: fire alarm systems, smoke detectors, sprinklers, fire extinguishers, water hose reels and lightning conductors. Insurance policies protecting against fires are also important. In some parts of Europe, safety signs on the back of hotel room doors say, “In case of fire EXIT building before tweeting about it.” Rwanda, being a twitter-friendly country, may want to incorporate such signs as part of fire safety management. Given the opening of East Africa’s borders and the call for increased intra-African trade, what other opportunities exist? Visitors that come to Rwanda are instantly dazzled by the cleanliness of the country. One foreign admirer writes, “... neither Geneva nor Zurich has anything on this tiny nation as far as sanitation”. For me the most salient lesson from his report is a quote from a Rwandan who says, “We can be poor, but we’ll be clean.” One of the reasons that visitors are so impressed by the level of cleanliness in Rwanda is because much of Africa is perceived as dusty, dirty, and dangerous. The reasons we give for (mis)living in this state of affairs is that we are poor and don’t have the resources to clean up our act. When pushed, we explain that places like Singapore can “afford” to be super-clean because they have no dust. Literally. Every square millimetre of ground is either covered by greenery or concrete. I think I even heard their government joke that Singapore may need to import dust to show its citizens what it looks like. Rwanda has as much dust as any other African country, but it remains clean; even in the countryside. Walking past a construction site in Kigali, I literally stopped in my tracks when it dawned on me that the man on a ladder with a cloth was cleaning the corrugated iron enclosure of the construction site! Construction sites are places of dust amidst the chaos that comes with digging deep into the earth’s bowels. But even here, cleanliness reigned supreme. A young Rwandan woman proudly told me she is a successful entrepreneur. One line of her business is the provision of cleaning services through tenders. Branding and expansion across national borders seems like a logical next step. “..Rwanda is one of the safest places ... this side of Zurich”, states another report. I would thus like to add that we can be poor, but be safe. Safe from one another, but also safe from our environment. In economic terms, that is an opportunity that cuts both ways. When, for instance, it comes to the average age that people within a country reach, most think in terms of hygiene, health care and so on. Security can also lead to increases in life expectancy. Going back to the case of the potential security investor, the skilled government salesman was able to redirect the flow of the conversation towards encouraging the company to indeed explore the security investment options and eventually got the business. With a reputation for both cleanliness and security, what investment opportunities can Rwanda create for itself in the region...and beyond? So we may be some sort of ‘poor’. But poor plus clean already makes us less poor. If we do the math correctly, poor plus clean plus safe, plus employing cleanliness and safety as investment models, might, one day, just make us pretty rich. Currently based in Rwanda, the writer comments about people, organizations and countries whose stories create a chrysalis for ideas.
