The Rwandan Debacle: Disguising Poverty as an Economic Miracle

Recently the Financial Times published an investigation carried out by their data analysis team, which confirmed the findings that have been published on roape.net on poverty in Rwanda over several years. Of all the countries in the world for which there is data, only South Sudan has experienced a faster increase in poverty over the past decade. Rwanda’s official poverty statistics are verifiably false. The government, supported by the World Bank, is involved in a tragic debacle in which the poor are the real victims. 

On 13 August 13 2019, the Financial Times published a lengthy investigation carried out by their data analysis team, which confirmed the findings that had been published on roape.net by several academics, regarding poverty in Rwanda. In particular, the Financial Times confirmed that the 7 percentage points decrease in poverty reported by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda(NISR) in 2016 , and endorsed by the World Bank in 2018, corresponded to an inflation rate of 4.71% for the period 2011-2014, that is, much lower than the total national CPI inflation for that same period (23%).

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