Rwanda has committed itself to economic transformation as a pillar of the current seven-year government programme, the National Strategy for Transformation (NSTP1, 2017-24). Whether the country succeeds in this endeavour will depend in good part on whether it learns a small set of key policy lessons from international experience in economic transformation.

This briefing sets out four such lessons, drawing on the most distinguished global thinking on the subject, as well as past research on Rwanda by the Supporting Economic Transformation (SET) programme:

(i) Specialising wisely

(ii) Clustering and concentrating

(iii) Coordinating foreign and domestic capabilities

(iv) Organising for steering and learning.