After decades of ethnic politics, civil war, and genocide in 1994-1995, Rwanda suddenly turned back to a sustainable development path. Under the leadership of President Paul Kagame, Rwanda now is regarded as a country with relatively low levels of corruption, improving political stability, increasing capacity of sustainable development. Since 2004, it experienced a high growth rate over 7% except 2009, which makes it a member of the “aid darlings”.

How could Rwanda realize such a shift in such a short period of time? After the genocide, Rwandan transition government took a series of measures to re-establish the national unity and realize ethnic reconciliation. Most importantly, in 1999, economic development, “Vision 2020”, was spearheaded as a chief goal of the country and a main means for supporting the political transition. The vision envisaged economic transformation from an agrarian-based to a knowledge-based one by 2020. The key objectives were to modernize the agricultural sector in the medium run, and to develop the private sector and create an entrepreneurial middle class in the long run, which would ultimately transform Rwanda into a middle-income country. Under Vision 2020 and with patient international support, Rwanda has achieved tremendous progress both politically and economically in the past 20 years.

While most analysis attributed the success to good leadership, the author argues that the key lies in a clever balance of the security-development nexus. Security and development are pre-conditions for each other, never one-way relationship. However, orthodox approach of addressing this nexus put more emphasis on peace based on the logics, using former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s term, that “there will be no development without security”. The Rwandan government always keeps another half sentence of Annan in mind, “and no security without development”. That’s why the Vision 2020 was carried forward when it still was considering political transition in 1999. Now, Rwanda’s rapid recovery had led to optimistic talk of it becoming a beacon of development, perhaps even comparable to an Asian hub like Singapore by 2020.

If one looks back to China’s development in the past 3 decades and more, something similar in development path emerging. By the end of 1970s, China was standing at the edge of state bankrupting, much similar to Rwanda in 1994 and worse than most of current African fragile states. Shortly after stabilization, China launched the opening up and reform policy in 1979 that triggered China’s rising 2 decades later, such an approach of addressing security-development nexus named by Chinese scholars as “Developmental Peace”. It’s true that much similarity can be found when comparing the development path of two countries.

Such a resonance endows two parties lots of cooperation opportunities and common understanding of governance. The trade volume between Rwanda and China has increased 40 folds, from 4 million USD in 1998 to 161 million USD in 2012; while ups and downs, Rwandan enjoyed surplus in most years. An approximate figure of China’s aid to Rwanda from 1971 until 2010 is RMB 1 billion (around 165 million USD in current price), composed of 49% (US$ 81 million) in grants, 32% (US$ 53 million) in zero-interest loans and 19% (US$ 31 million) in preferential loans. More importantly, such resonance of development paths makes the Rwandan government and ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, very keen to learn from China about effective but not necessarily good governance experience.

It’s important to note that security-development nexus is a relationship of egg and chicken or a two-way process, both Rwanda and China should keep in mind that economic development does solves many but not all problems. Said in an interview in 2009, President Paul Kagame accused “the European and the American commitment didn’t help on Africa”, argued that “the Chinese bring along what Africa needs: Investments. China invests in infrastructure, like building roads. The human rights concern shouldn’t be an excuse for capital not to be mobilized.” With arising domestic turmoil, China now is opening a new chapter of deepening reform all round, among them political reform of highest priority. More resonances possibly emerge from the future calls for Rwanda’s national reconciliation and recovery and rising.

Source of documents：