Rwanda: Human Development Report Rwanda-

Rwanda: Human Development Report

Rwanda- Brief Overview

Rwanda had suffered major blows to human development effort in 1994 when 1,000,000 or more people were killed in a brutal civil war. Since then, country has been trying to put the past behind but in the face of extreme poverty, debilitating hunger and disease; any progress if made is hardly visible. HIV along with poverty is the main issue facing this extreme poor rural country and United Nations has been actively working on these problems.

Even though the country claims impressive progress, this is not visible in real Rwanda where poverty still hampers most human development effort. "In human development terms, Rwanda's progress remains fragile. While Rwanda has made real progress in health and education since the war…, it will take some time before these efforts translate into substantial improvements in the Human Development Index (HDI)…"

In the year 2000, United States developed Millennium development goals for Rwanda which focused on improvement on social and economic fronts. It has been reported that some of those goals have been made due to strong commitment of Rwanda government. "Rwanda has made impressive efforts at achieving several MDGs, overcoming major setbacks during the genocide in 1994. This progress has been due to political commitment at the highest level, and international support for well designed and executed national scale programs."

In the education sector, Rwanda has shown strong improvement with enrollment rates going up to 97%. Country has been actively seeking women participation in education and politics. And Rwanda has a strong presence of women in the parliament, around 56% in 2008. HIV prevalence has also gone down according to MDG report.

Health has been the main focus of human development effort in Rwanda and it is found that along with HIV, instances of malaria cases have declined significantly with 9.3% fatalities in 2001 to 2.9% in 2006. Access to clean water was another human development goal and so far this has been achieved with moderate success. 71% of the population has access to clean water; the goal is to reach 82% which United Nations plans to accomplish in next five years.

Serious Issues and Problems in Human development

Despite the progress made by Rwanda in some areas, its key problem of poverty stays where it was at the turn of the century. As economy has grown, it has failed to eradicate debilitating poverty which claims several lives each year and contributes to many human development issues such as high child mortality rate and disease-related fatalities. Poverty has not declined significantly and from the year 2000 to 2006, only 4% decline was noticed when it cam down to 56.9% from 60% previously. Children continue to suffer tremendously in this poverty-ridden country which is among the countries with highest cases of child malnutrition. This has been connected to low productivity in agriculture and since Rwanda has 90% of its population engaged in agriculture, low productivity in that area affects all facets of human development. No improvement has been witnessed in child malnutrition problem as United Nations report indicates: "Child malnutrition is almost stagnant at 22% (2006). These high rates are largely due to low agricultural productivity. Achieving MDG 1 will require a focus on increasing rural incomes and agricultural output."

With child malnutrition, another major problem is child mortality rate which is one of the highest in the world. As Rwanda continues to struggle with poverty and diseases, its children continue to suffer from poor healthcare facilities and inadequate medical services. Child mortality rate is currently at 103 per 1000 births and along with equally high maternal mortality rate, this poses a serious challenge to the administration as well as United Nations. These high mortality rates indicate a need for serious changes in healthcare sector and to have better institutions available in rural areas where majority of fatalities occur.

Rwanda is also facing an environmental crisis as "combined pressures of agricultural production, high population, and economic expansion and rising energy needs"

are placing additional stress on already fragile environment in the country.

Major challenges for the future thus include:

Highly Volatile Agricultural sector:

As the economy grows in Rwanda, it masks the weaknesses of country's very vast but highly unpredictable agricultural sector. Most of the growth has been coming from service and manufacturing sector while agriculture's contribution is almost negligible and this indicates a serious problem because Rwanda is mainly an agrarian country with 90% of its population dependent on agriculture for livelihood.

While agriculture alone cannot sustain the entire population, it still needs to grow tremendously in order to support the rural areas and create some form of uniformity in growth across various sectors and social classes. Growth figures of 2004 show vast disparities as agriculture sector grew 1.4% while industry and services sector grew by 7 and 8% respectively.

High Population Growth:

Like most third world countries, Rwanda is also facing a population explosion. But unlike some third world countries, Rwanda also doesn't have the required facilities in place to handle this explosion.

While its economy is expanding, it is not doing much to bring down the poverty rate due to income distribution inequalities and thus the number of people living below the poverty line is consistently growing. This is adding to environmental stress in Rwanda.

Income Distribution Inequalities:

Expansion in the economy and impressive growth rates are not indicative of any human development progress in Rwanda where lower income groups continue to live in deep poverty. The gap between rich and poor is widening as most of the benefits of expanding economy are being reaped by high income groups. Positive economic growth is only masking the wide social and economic divide that exists between classes. United Nations Human development report states: "Rwanda's recent growth has largely bypassed the rural poor, leading to a concentration of wealth at the top of the income distribution, and an increase in the country's Gini coefficient from 0.47 to 0.51 from 2001 to 2006."

Human development Effort: What is being done?

In order to meet the many challenges facing Rwanda, national and international agencies have been focusing on key sectors of development such as education, health and the legal system. Rwanda cannot depend on natural resources for growth because it is not endowed with much in that area and hence needs to make heavy investment in its people who are its only driver of change and progress.

Since education is so important, Rwanda has made some impressive changes in its educational system to allow greater access to education. Since 2001, net enrollment in education has increased to more than 85% and what is even more impressive is the achievement of gender parity in enrollment. Government spending on education has increased dramatically which accounts for the rapid change in net enrollment. "Government and donors have put more effort and resources into the education sector in recent years than perhaps into any other sector in Rwanda. And these investments have already started bearing fruit…Education is already the single largest budget posted in the national budget, receiving U.S.$125 million in 2006, and expenditures are projected to increase by over 40% this year, to U.S.$169 million."

Even though various problems still exist in education sector, government has shown its commitment to the cause of expanding enrollment which is definitely commendable.

In the health sector too, public spending has been impressive and since 2001, Rwanda has seen some decline in its major problems such as under-five mortality rate, HIV prevalence and malaria cases. "Enormous efforts have been made in recent years to improve service delivery and funding of the health sector in Rwanda, with public spending on health more than doubling over the last few years."

Efforts in this area still have a long way to go before any concrete change can be seen. In the past few years, some positive changes have been noticed in under-five mortality rate which came down to 152% in 2005 from 196% in 2001 but it is still very high by any standard. Similarly there has been decline in maternal mortality rate which declined to 750 per 100,000 live births in 2000 compared to 1075 in 1995. But lack of access to more sophisticated healthcare facilities in rural areas is still hampering most efforts in healthcare. Deliveries are also very costly and most poor people cannot afford it. Insurance is offered but it fails to cover more complicated interventions and hence complications prove fatal for many poor women.