This chapter reviews the Bank of England’s use of QE since the global financial crisis. It takes stock of research from the Bank of England and elsewhere on its impact and effectiveness, drawing out the implications for monetary policy.

The services sector has been the centrepiece of Rwanda’s development strategy since 2000. This chapter describes the evolution of the Rwandan Patriotic Front’s (RPF) goals of transforming its landlocked disadvantages into an opportunity through becoming land-linked. In particular, the goal involves Rwanda becoming a regional hub for transport, tourism, sports and finance. The chapter begins by providing a critical overview of services-based strategies, highlighting their merits and limitations. It then describes the contradictory tensions emerging within Rwanda’s services-based strategy, particularly because the progressive image the RPF attempts to portray is often at odds with domestic realities. The evolution of Rwanda’s tourism strategy is discussed, which focuses on attracting high-end tourists and transforming Kigali into a hub for transport, high-profile events and conferences. The chapter describes how services strategies have evolved in line with Rwanda’s political settlement: at first, providing opportunities to private Rwandan capitalists but then gradually relying on foreign investors and government-affiliated investors. The chapter highlights that Rwanda’s strategy failed to prioritise linkages, which is a result of the elite vulnerability shaping domestic state–business relationships.

On 24 June 2021, China requested consultations with Australia pursuant to Article 4 of the Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes (DSU) and Article XXII of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 (GATT 1994), Article 17 of the Agreement on Implementation of Article VI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 (Anti-Dumping Agreement) and Article 30 of the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM Agreement) with respect to the measures and claims set out below.

This chapter introduces the ‘structuralist’ form of political settlements analysis employed in this book. The political settlements framework, initially developed by Mushtaq Khan, has gained increasing popularity but has evolved in very different directions. Political settlements analysis (PSA) was appealing to scholars because it encouraged analysis of power relations shaping development policy, highlighting how distributions of power among organised groups shaped how institutions operated. Influential donor-funded research programmes have aligned it more with neoclassical economics, and this has led to the obfuscation of the structuralist and historical materialist roots of the framework. This chapter elaborates the structuralist and historical materialist roots of political settlements analysis. It highlights the differences between non-structuralist and structuralist approaches to political settlements analysis in relation to the concept of holding power and its components: economic structure, rents, ideas and ideology, and violence and conflict. The chapter highlights how PSA can be used to help understand the contemporary transnational nature of vulnerabilities shaping late-development challenges.

This chapter describes Rwanda’s record within the manufacturing sector. Until recently, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) did not prioritise manufacturing-based growth because of the high transport costs associated with its landlocked geographical position. While there has been some attempt at refocusing on industrial policy since 2015, because of a rising trade deficit and the urgent need to create employment, there has not been substantial progress. Rwanda has not achieved significant advances in increasing industrial employment, production and exports. After presenting the evolution of Rwanda’s industrial policy, the chapter provides detailed examples of three sectors: apparels (textiles and garments), construction materials and pharmaceuticals. In line with dynamics in other sectors, domestic capital has been marginalised in favour of supporting RPF-affiliated firms or relying on foreign investors. Some foreign investors like Volkswagen and BioNTech have invested in Rwanda with much fanfare, but most success has been driven by RPF-affiliated firms. Rwanda’s hopes for structural transformation fall at a key domestic hurdle: building effective state–business relationships aimed at technological capability acquisition for latecomer firms.

This chapter describes the evolution of the mining sector in Rwanda, both its domestic mining sector and in relation to the trade of minerals from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Trading minerals from mineral-rich Eastern DRC has benefited Rwanda’s domestic economy through providing access to foreign exchange revenues. However, dependence on minerals from the DRC has been a double-edged sword. While providing significant revenues and being central to national security interests, increased reliance on the DRC contributes to the empowerment of individual business and military elites that may later become threats to the RPF’s ruling coalition. The RPF has transformed the domestic minerals sector with increased investments in geological investigations, as well as significant increases in domestic production. Dynamics in the domestic minerals sector mirror the elite vulnerability characterising other sectors. Though individual elites initially benefited from privatisation efforts, there is increased reliance on government-owned firms (like Ngali) for its most ambitious upgrading strategies. Attempts at beneficiation have been impeded by difficulties in developing effective domestic state–business relationships and challenges in centralising control over supply chains.

This chapter provides a snapshot of Rwanda’s evolving political settlement and economic development trajectory. The chapter begins by highlighting significant structural vulnerabilities that shaped Rwanda’s domestic politics historically, including ethnicity-based inequalities and political contestation, historical divisions associated with the royal family and aristocracy, refugee issues, inadequate employment opportunities and regional inequalities. It then highlights the rapid growth that took place in Rwanda over the last three decades, which has also been accompanied by significant export diversification. It then provides a brief political settlement analysis of present-day Rwanda, highlighting how development is being contested transnationally, pointing to the key vulnerabilities characterising its hub-based strategy. In particular, it describes how increased elite vulnerability has meant that the government has been reluctant to support domestic capital. As a result, the Rwandan government has failed to develop effective state–business relations aimed at achieving structural transformation.

The book is motivated by the question of analysing how Rwanda’s development trajectory can contribute to our understanding of why structural transformation remains so elusive. This chapter introduces the central contributions of the book. First, the book employs structuralist political settlements analysis to highlight how contemporary late development is contested transnationally, prompting the need for analysis across different scales. Second, the book describes how African growth has been largely driven by the services sector and Rwanda is emblematic of contemporary African growth experiences, especially since, like elsewhere on the continent, structural transformation has remained elusive. Third, the book contributes to existing literature on Rwanda by highlighting that the Rwandan Patriotic Front prioritised services-based strategies partly to reduce its reliance on domestic businesspeople because of the elite vulnerability that has characterised its rule. This strategy has yielded growth and export diversification without achieving structural transformation because elite vulnerability has inhibited effective state–business relations. The introduction also includes a discussion of the methodology employed in the book and the structure of the chapters that follow.