Major challenges

DFID: Working to reduce poverty in Rwanda

General Budget Support | Governance | Health | HIV/AIDS | Education | Agriculture

Introduction

The UK's relationship with Rwanda is governed by a ten-year memorandum of understanding, signed in February 2006.

In it, the government of Rwanda is committed to improvements in three key areas:

• Public financial management.
• Human rights and international obligations.
• Poverty reduction.

The UK has agreed to give Rwanda development aid worth at least £46 million a year until 2016.

Total UK aid will increase from £50 million in 2009-10 to £55 million in 2010-11.

General Budget Support

DFID has given General Budget Support (GBS) to the government of Rwanda since 1999.

In 2009/10 this amounted to £33 million. Our budget support is provided at the beginning of the government’s financial year after we are satisfied it is giving sufficient priority to poverty reduction and has open and transparent financial systems.

Other budget providers are Germany, the African Development Bank, the European Union and the World Bank, who meet regularly with government through the Budget Support Harmonisation Group. 

Governance

Poor governance is a cause of poverty. People suffer when governments don’t allow participation in political life, provide access to justice, deliver adequate public services or control corruption.

• Working with the government and other development partners, DFID is strengthening Rwanda’s economic governance and public financial management systems. This work is improving transparency and accountability of public spending in Rwands and develping more effective planning and budgeting systems.
• DFID and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) are supporting key organisations with a mandate to promote state accountability and responsiveness. This will benefit Parliament, the Ombudsman and the Human Rights Commission.
• DFID is strengthening the electoral process in Rwanda. We are working with other donors to provide core support to the Electoral Commission and helping civil society organisations to monitor elections.
• We are also working with international donors and NGOs to help Rwandan civil society better monitor the government's delivery of services to poor people.
• DFID has been supporting the Rwanda Revenue Authority to improve its efficiency in collecting taxes. This has helped the government to increase its revenue dramatically.

Health

The government of Rwanda has increase spending on health from 4% of the total budget in 1999 to 10% in 2008. External partners have rapidly increased their support for the sector, with a doubling of aid from £25.7 million in 2003 to £56 million in 2005. Global funds, to which DFID contributes, have been a significant contributor to this increase. These combined efforts have helped Rwanda to achieve the following:

• Geographical access has improved, with 60% of the population within five kilometres of a health centre.
• Vaccination rates for children under five have remain high (95%) and essential drugs are available 95% of the time.
• Enrolment in a collective health insurance scheme has increased sharply to more than 80% at the end of 2008.
• Deliveries attended by skilled personnel have increased to 62.8% (CPAF).

In March 2008, DFID launched a four-year, £12 million budget-support programme for the health sector, to help Rwanda make faster progress towards Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5. In the same year, the government of Rwanda and its partners put in place a Sector-Wide Approach (SWAP) framework to better harmonise efforts in the sector.

HIV/AIDS

In 2008, DFID contributed to a Global Fund of £29.7 million for HIV and AIDS in Rwanda. 

This has enabled Rwanda to achieve the following:

• HIV prevalence reduced to 3% (DHS, 2005).
• Voluntary counselling and treatment promoted as the key prevention strategy, with emphasis given to knowing your status.
• Increased access to anti-retroviral drugs (70,234 people) and improved prevention of mother-to-child transmission, with greater attention paid to diagnosis, care and treatment as well as better monitoring and evaluation.

In addition, DFID is financing a £4.25 million five-year project in partnership with genocide survivors’ associations, to improve the living conditions of HIV-positive women who came through the violence of the 1994 genocide.

Education

The government of Rwanda is committed to achieving the education Millennium Development Goals.

Recurrent spending on education (including budget support) now stands at 5.5% of gross domestic product, a 37% increase over the last three years. Of this, 45% is spent on primary education and 63% on the Nine Year Basic Education programme. 

Since 2002, DFID has contributed £14.5 million to education sector development, including support for textbooks and classrooms. In 2006, we launched two programmes: £10 million for sector budget support and £3 million for capacity building. The overall increase in resources to education has led to:

• 94% net primary enrolment – up from 73.3% in 2002.
• Gender parity in primary and secondary education.
• The abolition of fees in primary schools and provision of capitation grants to all primary and secondary schools.
• A steady increase in secondary enrolment, from 11.2% gross enrolment to 16.7%.
• The establishment of more than 100 new secondary schools.
• An increase in the number of higher education students, from 15,940 in 2002 to 45,000 in 2008.
• The training of 465 secondary school teachers through distance learning.
• The provision of primary school textbooks (each one used by three pupils on average) for English, French, maths and social studies.
• The construction of more than 1000 primary classrooms.

The lead donor for education in Rwanda, DFID led the ‘Education for All’ Fast Track Initiative (FTI) appraisal that endorsed the government’s education plans and attracted an additional £42 million from the FTI Catalytic Fund.

This funding - £16 million for 2007 and £27 million for 2008 - will, alongside new and existing donor contributions, enable Rwanda to hire an extra 2,400 teachers, build 112,000 classrooms and supply textbooks in core subjects for all primary schoolchildren.

In April 2009, DFID presented Rwanda’s bid for a £21 million FTI Catalytic Fund Bridging Grant in Copenhagen, which was granted.

The UK has now agreed to give an additional £5 million to the Rwanda Education Sector through Sector Budget Support to assist in the building of an additional 3,127 classrooms and roll out the English Language Strategy as priorities of the Nine Year basic Education Programme. 

Agriculture

Investment and agricultural productivity are both constrained by the lack of arrangements to register land ownership and transactions. DFID is supporting a reform process that will secure the land rights of all citizens, from investors to smallholder farmers. So far an estimated 7.9 million landholders have been given full property rights.

We are also helping the Ministry of Agriculture to reorganise itself and acquire the necessary skills to transform agriculture into a dynamic engine of growth for the country. Around 80% of the population currently earn their livelihoods from agriculture, but the government expects this to fall to 50% by 2020, with services and technology driving the economy.