GoKawiilThe Political Economy of Rwanda’s Rise Pritish Behuria Cambridge Univ. Press (2026)
Can Rwanda innovate its way to prosperity? Few African countries have drawn as much admiration and controversy as Rwanda has. Three decades since the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi ethnic group, Rwanda is widely viewed as a rare success story of African development.
It has built a reputation for administrative competence, public-health achievements and ambitious state planning. The country has become a laboratory for development initiatives and a fixture in policy case studies. Its capital city, Kigali, hosts global health summits, economic meetings and international technology forums.
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As one official tells economist Pritish Behuria early in his new book, The Political Economy of Rwanda’s Rise, “if you have an idea for a development policy, the place to see if it has legs, is Rwanda”. But has the nation achieved development, or merely growth?
Blending politics, economics and science, and drawing on a decade of research and more than 580 interviews, Behuria describes Rwanda’s bold attempt to transform its economy after the genocide. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) — Rwanda’s ruling political party — led by President Paul Kagame, envisioned that the landlocked and densely populated nation could become a regional hub for finance, tourism, logistics and knowledge-intensive services.
Although it has made impressive gains in health, technology and governance, economic growth has yet to translate into an industrial economy, according to Behuria.
Capacity challenges
The book focuses on what economists call structural transformation: the process in which a country’s economy transitions from relying on low-productivity activities, such as conventional farming, to higher-value sectors built on technological learning and industrial capability, such as manufacturing and the generation and spreading of technical knowledge. Behuria examines Rwanda’s transformation through the question: why does structural transformation remain so elusive in Africa?
Rwanda has undoubtedly improved in many measures of human welfare and has made notable advances in health and social indicators — achievements that have helped to cement its reputation as a model of effective governance. But Behuria asks whether such progress has generated the technological capabilities required to catch up with countries that have greater economic growth. His answer, to a large extent, is no.
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