East African Business Week

KIGALI, RWANDA - Rwanda is pursuing an ambitious target to create 1.5 million new jobs in the next seven years.
The move is expected to help reduce poverty, improve the standards of living of many Rwandans and boost economic growth.
The Minister of Public Service and Labour, Mr. Anastase Murekezi said recently that the government seeks to see at least 200,000 new jobs created each year.
This means that the small East African country will reduce unemployment by half from the current 424,000 to 212,000 by 2017.
Currently, some 8% or 424,000 Rwandans, mostly the youth, are jobless.
Each year, about 140,000 new jobs are created.
There are about 5.3 million Rwandans eligible for work.
By reducing unemployment, the government believes that even poverty will go down dramatically and people will have more money to spend, boosting national consumption.
Currently, more than a half of 10 million plus Rwandans are poor.
Rwanda's per capital income is estimated at US$520, according to thegovernment statistics.
Meanwhile the landlocked country, with limited natural resources couldface challenges ahead arising from its bursting population.
Currently, the government says that around 290,000 Rwandans are born each year.
The highly increasing population with high poverty levels could become a burden to the government's expenditure limiting investments into development projects that could deliver jobs.
The Minister said one way of creating jobs is to encourage Rwandans to form cooperatives.
Currently, the Rwanda Cooperative Agency (RCA) has more than 3,200 registered cooperatives.
Recently, the governments of Rwanda and Kenya signed a memorandum of understanding to pave way for the Kenyan government to pass on its experience in developing a strong cooperative movement to Rwanda.
Kenya is expected to help build capacity of the Rwandan coops thus increasing their efficiency and survival.
The government is also keen on mobilizing foreign direct investments (FDIs) to boost job creation.
FDIs could be private investments or remittances from Rwandans living abroad.
The job creation promise is embedded in President Kagame's seven-year mandate that ends in 2017.