Economy

Imports
$4.32 billion (2022). Refined Petroleum ($593M), Gold ($404M), Palm Oil ($124M), Rice ($112M), and Raw Sugar ($107M), importing mostly from China ($808M), Tanzania ($474M), Kenya ($439M), United Arab Emirates ($416M), and India ($309M).

Financial inclusion factors (over 15 years of  age)
• 36.7% have an account with a financial institution
• 0.7% have a credit card
• 31.1% have a mobile money account

Ease of doing business
Easy to conduct business (rated 76.5 out of 100). Ranked 2nd out of 48 Sub-Saharan African countries. Ranked 38th out of 190 countries worldwide (2022, World Bank).

Exports
$1.77 billion (2022). Gold ($542M), Tin Ores ($124M), Coffee ($112M), Malt Extract ($86.9M), and Niobium, Tantalum, Vanadium and Zirconium Ore ($83.4M), exporting mostly to United Arab Emirates ($568M), Democratic Republic of the Congo ($450M), Thailand ($83.9M), United States ($61.7M), and Ethiopia ($55.2M).
In 2022, Rwanda was the world’s biggest exporter of Tungsten Ore ($52.7M).

Economic freedom
‘Mostly not free’ (rated 51.6 out of 100). Ranked 30th out of 47 Sub-Saharan African countries. Ranked 135th out of 184 countries worldwide (2024, Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal).

Global Innovation Index
Ranked 9th out of 28 Sub-Saharan African countries, and 103rd out of 132 worldwide.

The Global Innovation Index captures the innovation
ecosystem performance of 132 economies and tracks the most recent global innovation trends.

Media

Media language English, French, Kinyarwanda and Swahili.

Information channels
State TV and radio reach the largest audiences. By 2019, there were 34 radio stations, 14 TV stations, 46 newspapers and 88 news websites, according to the media regulator. Censorship is ubiquitous and self-censorship is commonplace, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in its 2019 press freedom index. Freedom House said defamation was decriminalised in 2018 but that a revised law has criminalised written content and cartoons that “humiliate” Rwandan leaders. The BBC can be heard on FM in Kigali (93.9), Karongi (93.3) and Butare (106.1). The Voice of America and Deutsche Welle broadcast on FM in Kigali. By late 2018 3.7 million Rwandans were online, comprising around 29% of the population (InternetWorldStats.com). There are around 620,000 social media users (We Are Social, January 2019). Facebook is the leading social media platform. The government has increasingly blocked access to news websites based abroad, says Freedom House. It says this is partly because many journalists have fled the country and now work in exile and online.

The press

The New Times – private, pro-government, English-language
IGIHE – news website
Umuseke – news website

Television

RTV – operated by state-owned Rwanda Broadcasting Agency
Tele10 – privately-owned

Radio

Radio Rwanda – state-owned, broadcasts in English, French, Kinyarwanda and Swahili
Radio 10 – private
Flash FM – private
Contact FM – private
City Radio – private
Radio Izuba – private
Radio Maria – Catholic

News agency

Rwanda News Agency (RNA)

Internet Data

Internet users
30.5% penetration, 4.25 million

Share of web traffic by device
52.41% mobile phones, 46.68% computers (laptops and desktops), 0.92% tablet devices.

Median speed of fixed Internet connection
10.15 Mbps

Mobile connection as a percentage of total population: 75.9%

Percentage of mobile connections that are broadband (3G-5G): 59.8%

Most popular web search engines
Google (93.99%), Bing (5.25%), Yahoo! (0.52%), DuckduckGo (0.1%),  Ecosia (0.03%), other (0.01%).

Most used social media
Facebook (44.5%), Twitter (23.85%), Pinterest (13.67%), Instagram (10.65%), YouTube (5.06%), LinkedIn (1.46%), Reddit (0.46%), other (0.35%).

Social statistics

Life expectancy
66 yrs (2021)

Gender
Men continue to hold most of the higher-level positions in organisations, although more and more women are being promoted. Society is generally stricter with women’s deviant behaviour than with men’s.

Corruption perceptions Index
Rwanda scored 51 out of 100, ranked 54 out of 180 countries worldwide.

Current health expenditure
7.32% of GDP

CO2 emissions
0.1 metric tons per capita

Current education expenditure
63% of total expenditure in public institutions

Religion
Most Rwandans have a religious faith, but religion does not interfere with professional life (although there are a few exceptions). Most people are Christian (Catholic, Protestant, Adventist) and others are Muslim (particularly city-dwellers).

Class
Social classes, as we traditionally think of them, do not exist. However, it may be said that economic standing may define class: people acquire a certain status from their wealth.

Ethnicity
A taboo subject. People only discuss their ethnic origin with people they know very well and do not feel comfortable discussing it with a “stranger”.

World Happiness Index
Rwanda ranked 143 out of 146 countries, with a score of 3.268.