Rwanda's safety and security stand out as the top-performing pillar, achieving an impressive score of 93.82% as per the latest Rwanda Governance Scorecard (RGS). The latest score card highlights a boost in safety and security, increasing to 93.82% from 93.63% in 2023. Human and social development remains the lowest-performing pillar, at 75.21%. Since its inception in 2010, the RGS consistently highlighted safety and security as the highest-performing pillar, reflecting the government’s commitment to security as a cornerstone of socio-economic transformation. In contrast, pillars such as human and social development, quality of service delivery, and economic and corporate governance consistently lagged. Strong performance is evident in safety and security, anti-corruption, transparency, accountability, rule of law, political rights and civil liberties, and participation and inclusiveness. The rule of law pillar has generally improved since the first edition, though it experienced a slight decline in the 10th and current editions. The current RGS, the 11th of the series, recommends that the judiciary should expedite court case processing and that the justice sector establish mechanisms to sustain the improvements made. The political rights and civil liberties pillar improved from 71% in the first edition, to 88% in the current edition. The report highlights the need to strengthen political organizations' role in governance and facilitate easier access to information for journalists in accordance with the law. Meanwhile, the participation and inclusiveness pillar has risen from 74.23% to 85.84%, with recommendations to further enhance gender equality in leadership, especially in public institutions. It is worth noting that while the safety and security pillar consistently maintained the highest performance since the first edition, there is still a need to strengthen collaboration between citizens and security organs to further improve personal and property safety. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), human development involves expanding people's choices to enable them to lead long, healthy lives, access education, enjoy a decent standard of living, and exercise political freedom, alongside the fulfillment of other fundamental human rights. In the context of the RGS, the pillar of investing in human and social development tracks progress in key areas such as education, health, social protection, and climate change resilience. This pillar experienced a slight decrease of 0.30%, dropping from 75.51% to 75.21%. The investing in human and social development pillar has shown a negative trend in performance since the first edition. To address this, it is noted, there is a need to improve the efficiency of social protection programmes, expedite the categorization of people with disabilities to enhance their access to essential services like health and education, and strengthen national measures to mitigate the impacts of climate change. The quality of service delivery pillar has generally shown a positive trend, despite slight declines in the 6th, 9th, and current editions. The report recommended an improvement in service delivery in the agriculture sector, particularly in post-harvest management and markets for agricultural produce; enhancing the quality of land services, especially in land acquisition and document transfer; developing basic infrastructure in settlement areas; and increasing ICT literacy, particularly among primary and secondary school teachers. The economic and corporate governance pillar maintained a positive trend from the 2nd to the 11th RGS editions, though it experienced slight declines in performance in the 3rd and 8th editions. To further improve, there is a need to promote the production of high-value goods and services for export to reduce trade imbalances and encourage financial institutions to ease access to credit. The 11th Rwanda Governance Scorecard revisited the implementation of policy recommendations from the 9th edition, specifically the development of a multi-year nationwide strategy to integrate climate change into development planning. This strategy aligns with NST1, Priority 7 of Economic Transformation, which focuses on the sustainable management of natural resources and the environment, aiming to transition Rwanda towards a carbon-neutral economy. It provides a detailed assessment of governance across eight pillars whereby six pillars performed above 80%, while the remaining two scored between 60% and 79.9%. The RGS offers recommendations for improvement, which are monitored annually to track progress and some policy recommendations are carried over from previous editions within the NST1 framework, while others are newly introduced.
