A few days after the World Bank announced Rwanda is this year’s biggest reformer in doing business we still bask in the euphoria of our rare national triumph.

Not long ago Rwanda was synonymous with Genocide. Now we are known as the first country in Sub Saharan Africa to make the most business-friendly improvements in the world, according to the World Bank. We have jumped from number 143 last year to 67th this year. How about that!

Obviously there still is a long way to go especially when it comes to putting in action these reforms.

More investors are bound to eye Rwanda, but when they come they surely will face the first headache which is to find good employees. Institutions like the former HIDA were there to help address this problem. Its successor, the Public Sector Capacity Building Secretariat will now have to work 24/7 if that problem is to be alleviated.

But efforts to train unskilled, inefficient people do not bear fruit overnight, so incoming companies need to be given more incentives to train their workforces.

The government for instance may step in to subsidize training costs in the knowledge that a) by doing this Rwanda gets perceived as even more business friendly and b) a well trained Rwandan is a real asset wherever he or she will be employed now and in the future, either in the public or private sectors.  

The biggest nightmare to investors however remains the process of land acquisition. Rwanda Development Board is mounting a rear guard action in the face of incompetently (and even corruptly) run district land bureaus.

District land bureaus are in charge of approving or allocating plots to investors, local or foreign. As a mechanism to ensure transparency there are land commissions to monitor the activities of land bureaus. Bureaus allocate plots or land and commissions are like tribunals investors may turn to when things do not seem to go well.

These two organs are supposed to work hand in hand. Unfortunately in actual practice members of land bureaus tend to do things their way - they leave land commissions out of decisions, and disregard any complaints that may come from land commissions or any private individual, company or investor.

The nefarious practice by powerful land bureaus for instance of allocating a plot twice or even more thus creating conflicts here and there has not stopped.

Land allocation is only one example of serious problem facing RDB in particular and the government in general.

But we cannot dwell too much on what doesn’t work.

Obviously what works is plenty; otherwise we wouldn’t be the best doing business reformers this year. The reforms have consisted mainly of enacting regulations that eased access to credit, made it easier for one to start or close a business, strengthened minority shareholder protections, sped up property registration and so on.

Kudos to everyone involved in making it all happen.

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Rwanda is best business reformer but remaining issues might be tricky