Policy Advocacy

Rwanda’s trade policy vision is to grow sustainable and diversified quality products and services for trading locally, regionally and internationally with the aim of creating jobs, increasing incomes and improving living standards for Rwandans (Trading for Development). Such a policy promotes competitive sectoral clustering, including facilitating business linkages and focusing on high value added products and services. This entails developing learning, innovation, and networking for export diversification and value addition. Special focus is also placed on the development of the rural and urban private sector to engage in trade as well as in manufacturing for trade.

The Rwanda National Export Strategy (NES) aims at ensuring that the supply side can efficiently respond to opportunities in the regional and international marketplaces. The strategy encompasses initiatives that reinforce existing supply side capacity, develop new capacities, promote entrepreneurship and reinforce human capital. Given that capacity diversification (producing new products or services or new product lines) is likely to require capital investment, the strategy also has a pro-investment orientation.