Rwanda and the United Kingdom are looking forward to leveraging the forthcoming Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting (CHOGM) slated for June in Kigali to strengthen trade ties between both countries.

The past two years saw Rwanda’s exports to the UK shrink by 3 percent while the total trade value decreased from Rwf44.3 billion (€33 million) in 2019 to Rwf36.2 billion (€27 million) in 2020.

The decrease is attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic. Rwanda’s top export commodities to the UK are tea, coffee and cocoa while UK’s top export commodities to Rwanda are medicinal & pharmaceutical products and general industrial machinery.

As both countries seek to strengthen trade, more commodities and bilateral
investments will be included. In an interview with Rwanda Today, the British High Commissioner to Rwanda, Omar Daair, said both countries seek to not only expand trade but also other partnerships.

“There is British interest in areas like mining, for example, where we can also
see some greater trade. I am hoping that the business forum that will be held during CHOGM will be a good opportunity to bring British businesses here to show them how much there is going on here and where we can get involved.

When you think about particularly making Rwanda a hub for other regional activity because Rwanda has a population of 13 million and that is limited market size, but the region is huge. When you see companies like BBox that work here have this strategy where they have headquarters where they pile at and look to expand out and I think that is a really good story to tell the British investors,” Mr Omar said.

Both the UK and Rwanda have been preparing for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting for over four years. The meeting, after being postponed twice, was placed on June 20. It will bring together up to 10,000 delegates from all the 53 Commonwealth countries from across the world. Prince Charles and his wife Duchess Camilla have confirmed they will attend the meeting.

The UK is among Rwanda’s major development partners, especially in education. According to Mr Daair, the UK spent over 10.7 billion (€8 million) on
education in 2020, making it the biggest receiver sector of UK aid. The British High Commissioner said that the country is looking to expand to more sectors.

“In development partnership, there is a lot of scope to do more in areas like green growth. We are now looking at how that transforms the current programs into the next phase, and I think a lot of that would be around the climate-sensitive elements of agriculture and there is a lot we can work together on that. It is things like that where we see that Rwanda may be a small country that has really big ideas and big ambitions, which is great.

There is also an element about that that is about regional security because we have seen Rwanda do some impressive stuff in places like Mozambique, they have got peacekeepers in Sudan. That is another area where we want to partner to ensure we are promoting greater peace and security in the region,” Mr Daair said.