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Rwanda

Uncomfortable Truths

Africa was far ahead of Europe in adopting money transfers by mobile phone. They
did it differently, but as banks saw that it by-passed traditional bank branches, European

banks accelerated the development of their own mobile payments.

(The system that mushroomed in Africa involved in trusted non-banking organisations opening
'shops' in some towns, employing agents in others. One person would enter one of these
premises, leave a sum of money and provide the phone number of the person who the money was
for. An instant transfer then takes place. The switch to this form of banking service was so big
that a 'trusted' organisation with its own 'shops' might simply be a long-standing newspaper
publisher. Gisenyi, Rwanda has, or at least had, a row of these 'shops'.)

But when you cross-borders between countries such as Uganda and Rwanda, their

government's concern about money being transferred to 'disaffected' groups is so great
that they impose restrictions not just on mobile phone registration but also on 'money

transfer' account registration.
State security is a major concern in Rwanda. Instability, inequality and insecurity in

Burundi add to Rwandan security concerns. They also hinder Economic Development.

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Lake Tanganyika (and Tanzania) 117

The eastern edge of Rwanda borders Tanzania.

There is a single border crossing at Rosumo Falls which is c 1,300 km from the
Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam. That region of Tanzania is so far from the capital and

so remote that when you cross into Tanzania from Rwanda that it’s a day’s journey to the

nearest ATM in Mwanza, the major Tanzanian port on Lake Victoria.
If you go south from the border point, bypassing Burundi in order to reach Lake

Tanganyika, the region is so under-developed, and sufficiently insecure, that there were no

scheduled land transport services there when I last visited.
Tanzania, as a country, is not a troubled or troubling neighbour for Rwanda. But as

with the DRC Kivu provinces, the Tanzanian provinces that border Rwanda and Burundi

don't provide any sense of security.
" Lake Tanganyika is an African Great Lake. It is the second-oldest freshwater lake in the

world, the second-largest by volume, and the second-deepest, in all cases after Lake
Baikal in Siberia. It is the world's longest freshwater lake. The lake is shared between

four countries – Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Burundi, and
Zambia, with Tanzania (46%) and DRC (40%) possessing the majority of the lake. It drains
into the Congo River system and ultimately into the Atlantic Ocean.