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Showing all content in Rwanda
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Publication - Working Paper
Is there an urban wage premium in Rwanda?
This paper uses household data from Rwanda to analyse the urban wage premium and urban consumption premium. We find that both nominal wage and nominal consumption of workers in Rwanda are significantly higher in urban areas than in rural areas - and correlate to city size - even when individual characteristics are controlled for. This implies some form of agglomeration...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Transforming the vision of Kigali: The economic case for investing in public parks
Major public green spaces define the vision and lifestyle of great cities. Several great African cities have their own major central parks but, as of 2020, Kigali does not. Investing in a system of public parks would transform the vision of the city. Rwanda has a laudable set of policies and plans for public green spaces, but political will and funding are needed to...
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Project
Regional (dis)integration in the East African Community
Two forms of regional trade agreements are free trade areas and customs unions. In a free trade area, members liberalise trade with each other, but each country sets its own tariffs for imports originating from non-members of the agreement. A customs union goes one step further: members negotiate and adopt a uniform tariff schedule called a Common External Tariff (CET),...
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Publication - Working Paper
The commercial real estate market in the city of Kigali
City of Kigali commissioned a review of the Kigali Master Plan in 2018-2019, which was then conducted by urban planning company Surbana Jurong. As part of this review the City requested that a number of baseline studies are done to inform the review, of which this study, which covers commercial real estate, is one. The objective of the project is to present a range of...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Jobs in a crisis: Principles of effective public employment programmes
This brief outlines the role of public employment programmes (PEPs) in overall economic crisis response with reference to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unemployment has spiked in developing countries, due to COVID-19 mitigation measures, such as national lockdowns and the indirect effects of the economic global shock from the pandemic. PEPs often form part of...
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Project
Fostering adoption and productive use of electricity in rural Rwanda
More than 700 million people worldwide lack access to electricity, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, which hosts more than 70% of the world’s non-electrified population. To reach the United Nations’ SDG 7 (Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all) by 2030, a big electrification push in Africa is needed. Rural electrification programs,...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Digital information channels in the Rwandan potato value chain
The potential of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to provide smallholder farmers with useful agronomic and market information is widely heralded. Mobile phones can offer much richer modes of communication sharing, but in many parts of the world limited digital literacy, use of smart phones, and poor data connectivity can constrain this potential. ...
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Blog post
Overcrowding and pandemic risk hotspots in Rwanda
Proximity between people, otherwise known as population density, is the foundation of prosperity and productivity in cities. There is no empirical link between the spread of COVID-19 risk and city population density. However, when population density is not well managed and becomes overcrowding, the risk of COVID-19 and other contagious diseases, rises. The COVID-19...
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Publication - Project Report
Densification without contagion? Overcrowding and pandemic risk hotspots in Rwanda
In this paper, we estimate the location of overcrowding hotspots in Kigali and five secondary cities in Rwanda using a variant of the methodology used recently by the World Bank in Mumbai, Kinshasa and Greater Cairo. This is of interest for three key reasons. First, whilst overcrowding is an imperfect proxy for the type of close interpersonal contact that spreads...
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Publication - Policy Brief
The impact of scaling up electric motorbikes in Rwanda
Approximately one in five trips in Kigali are taken by petrol-fuelled motorcycle taxis, contributing to poor air quality, high demand for imported fuel, and rising Green House Gas emissions that contribute to climate change. This brief analyses the potential impact of scaling up the use of electric motorbikes to 100% (as a proportion of all motorbike taxis) in Kigali...