Pemandu Associates is a private consultancy company focused on public sector transformation, business turnaround and communications. To that end, we work closely with the highest level of government and top executives and have a presence in 29 countries and counting to help deliver national and business objectives in a sustainable and inclusive manner.
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Singapore ventures among South-east Asian firms taking root in Rwanda
PHOTOS: SHARLYNE SOH
KIGALI – RwandAir pilot Suzanna Seng, 39, was driving from her home near central Kigali to the airport when she was greeted by the sight of rows of red motorcycle taxis, their riders waiting vainly along the road for passengers.
It was March 2020, the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and Rwanda had gone into lockdown. With its borders open only for returning citizens, and people forbidden from moving around freely, businesses were gravely affected and the livelihoods of millions changed overnight. Motorcycle taxi drivers were not spared.
“You can see the despair in their eyes because they live from payday to payday. So, not knowing if they will have enough food and money for tomorrow is not a nice feeling to have,” said Ms Seng.
This drove the Singaporean to establish her courier delivery business, QNE Delivery Services, three weeks into the lockdown.
Her team of five locals continues to work out of an annexe the size of a bedroom at the back of her house. There, they coordinate deliveries of purchases from food to dog beds, with drivers making 25 to 30 trips daily.
Ms Seng’s side hustle is just one of the few South-east Asian business ventures in Rwanda.
Even though Rwanda attracts more foreign direct investments (FDIs) than similarly sized nations such as Burundi and Haiti, it has found it challenging to attract corporations looking to expand and aspiring entrepreneurs.
The Rwandan government promotes the country as a business-friendly destination, and the FDI of the small landlocked African nation of 14.1 million amounted to US$398.6 million (S$545.3 million) in 2022, according to data from the World Bank.
Its net inflow has been increasing since before the pandemic. In 2019, FDI stood at about US$263.2 million. By comparison, countries such as Burundi and Haiti reported FDI net inflows of US$12.9 million and US$39.3 million respectively in 2022.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong drew attention to Rwanda during a working visit there in June 2022 when he called for Singaporeans to venture into new markets, and named Rwanda as one of the “bright spots”.
He noted it has a young population with a median age of 22, compared with the median age of over 40 in Singapore. PM Lee said that like Singapore in the early days of its independence, Rwandans had the same desire to progress, succeed, and to make a better future for themselves, and a government that was keen to create opportunities for its people.
Singapore’s bilateral trade with Rwanda stood at $4 million in 2022, making the East African nation its 37th largest trading partner in sub-Saharan Africa, said Enterprise Singapore.
Now, there are about 10 Singapore companies in Rwanda, primarily in the digital, urban solutions and agricultural sectors.
In the country, the number of South-east Asian enterprises has been growing slowly, said Mr Amit Jain, director of the NTU-SBF Centre for African Studies. However, the lack of knowledge about Rwanda and its relative inaccessibility hinder more businesses from exploring one of the least corrupt nations in Africa. “Currently there are only a handful of South-east Asian businesses there… I’d be surprised if there are more than 25 companies,” he added.
In contrast, China has poured investments into Rwanda. According to the 2022 Annual Report by the Rwanda Development Board, China’s investment in the country stood at US$182.4 million. The second-largest foreign investor was India, with US$151 million.
South-east Asian businesses in Africa tend to start out as opportunistic investments, said Professor Andrew Delios, 58, from the Department of Strategy and Policy at the National University of Singapore’s Business School.
“We don’t see any systematic movement of foreign direct investment from South-east Asia, but what we would see are opportunistic, periodic or isolated investments predicated upon some unique opportunities that exist.”
Urban planning company Surbana Jurong has been responsible for city planning for Kigali, which was devastated by the 1994 genocide, for the past 15 years. Its Kigali City Master Plan, which aimed to transform the capital city into an attractive destination to live and work, won the Best Overseas Planning Project Award 2010 and Best Planning Project 2013 in the Singapore Institute of Planners Planning Awards. Surbana Jurong’s work in Rwanda has led to other planning projects in Ghana, Tanzania, South Africa, Burundi and Kenya.
Following a 2018 review of the 2013 master plan, Surbana Jurong was engaged by the Rwanda Housing Authority to design plans for six secondary cities in Rwanda including Huye and Musanze.
Its Kigali Master Plan 2050 aims to support sustainable economic growth and community well-being.
“Cities are dynamic and continuously evolving,” deputy managing director of master planning at Surbana Jurong Anandan Karunakaran said.
“Regular review of masterplans allows planners to assess the current state of the city and make necessary adjustments to align with the changing urban dynamics.”
Other Singapore companies in Rwanda include environmental consultancy GreenA Consultants, whose work includes providing sustainability consulting work such as green certification and environmental audits to private and public organisations, and e-solutions firm CrimsonLogic, which entered Rwanda in 2008 to improve the delivery of public and social services. It also helped develop the Visit Rwanda website, an online system for the booking of permits and services for tourist sites.
Modern chicken farm Poultry East Africa Limited (Peal) is another example of a Singaporean enterprise that flourished in an untapped market.
During a business trip in 2011, founder Lam Shumei, 38, discovered that chicken – a basic protein for many – was considered a luxury good in Rwanda. She set up Peal in a bid to provide affordable and accessible poultry to Rwandans.
Based in Bugesera, Peal operates its own hatchery, layer and broiler farms, in addition to its processing, distribution and retail outlets. It employs over 100 Rwandans and works with 230 small-scale contract farmers.
In 2021, Ms Lam hired fellow Singaporean Jonathan Wong, who had lived in Rwanda since 2013, as Peal’s sales and business development manager.
PHOTO: SHARLYNE SOH
Mr Wong, 47, who had run a consumer electronics company and second-hand car business, had planned to return home when Covid-19 hit his businesses badly. Peal’s offer had him reconsidering.
“It allowed me to stay here and it was a new market for me. So, when Shumei offered this to me, I thought, why not? It’s something new, something else I can learn,” he said.
Rwanda had not been Mr Wong’s first pick for a venture, as he was considering setting up in Uganda.
But all it took was a road trip there for him to change his mind. “I thought Rwanda was more attractive, safer, and it is also the heart of Africa… It felt very familiar and very clean. It felt like home, put it this way,” said Mr Wong, who is single, with no children.
Rwanda was also where Filipino entrepreneur Royce Roselle Sinoy, 35, found his footing after years of job-hopping across Africa. He arrived in 2016 when he was offered a job as the chief engineer and maintenance manager at a hotel.
He lost his job during the Covid-19 pandemic, and was doing odd jobs to support his wife and teenage daughter when a friend and fellow Filipino entrepreneur encouraged him to start his own construction and contracting works company. In 2022, Xtrim General Contractor and Services was born.
“‘Why don’t you start your own company? Why are you working for other people and making them richer?’ He said that to me, and it got me thinking,” Mr Sinoy said. By then, he had garnered a wealth of experience working in Rwanda and saw that the country was lacking in interior design and construction expertise.
Business is picking up, he said, and he has worked on projects for major hotel chains like Four Points by Sheraton and Marriott Hotels.
For Malaysia-based consulting firm Pemandu Associates, it was the Rwandan government that hired it to help with the country’s development in 2022.
PHOTO: SHARLYNE SOH
The team of 13 Malaysians oversees national projects from infrastructure to energy to pension funds. One of its key projects is the Bizwa Riverside Estate housing plan. The team also acts as the point of contact for Malaysian companies interested in tapping the Rwandan market. Stream lead manager Vinod Naidu said: “Rwanda is the best welcome to Africa. It’s the best stepping stone because it has good infrastructure, clean roads and a good government.”
That said, while over 30 Malaysian companies have contacted them, none has yet started a business here. “I think business is about risk and they understand that. But because it’s a new continent that Malaysians are exploring, they are more cautious and would want to be more certain,” said Mr Naidu, 33.
Mr Jain, 50, who is also a frontier market specialist, remains hopeful that Rwanda’s business links with South-east Asia will continue to grow. “Only time can tell if this small momentum can be sustained. But if there is a huge success story of a South-east Asia business in Rwanda, that will definitely help.”
- The writer is a final-year communication studies student at the Nanyang Technological University’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information. The report is produced as part of the school’s Going Overseas for Advanced Reporting (Go-Far) programme.
Source: Singapore Straits Times
Read the full article here.
Bring back school ranking system, says Idris
GEORGE TOWN: A nationwide school ranking system based on grades ought to be revived as a remedy to push for better overall academic performance, a former minister said today.
Idris Jala said the approach is two-pronged – one to detect teachers who are performing poorly and helping them to improve their teaching methods; and the other, motivation for students to do better.
The former minister in the prime minister’s department said when the system was put in place, there was a big shift in academic performance, with the “worst performers” jumping up to higher bands, while the average ones did better.
“We have had a 75% reduction in worst-performing schools such as band six and seven (the lowest rung), while there was a 47% jump in the top tier band one and two.
“It was a silent revolution. By publishing these rankings publicly, we were putting their feet close to the fire – teachers, principals and students,” he said in a G25 talk titled “Reflections On The Malaysia Education Blueprint”.
In the mid-2010s, a rank system was introduced for all schools, with band one and band two being the higher-performing schools, and bands five, six and seven being the lower-performing schools.
Idris said without granular data on how schools were performing through data analytics, one was going “blind”. He said key data from top schools could be used for other schools so results can be obtained.
However, he lamented the doing away of public exams such as the Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR). He said without public exams, schools were given a free hand to assess themselves to be the best.
“I am going to bet with anybody, a few years down the road, this is going to be a big-time misadventure. We need exams that are robust,” he said.
On the topic of English, Idris said some years back, all 70,000 English teachers were made to sit for the Cambridge Placement Test, but 70% of them did not pass at a satisfactory level.
He said the action plan was to have these teachers undergo remedial classes to improve their English.
Idris also dismissed the notion that the poor curriculum used in our schools was the reason the country’s education system fared badly.
He said it boiled down to students and teachers, with the latter’s teaching method playing an important role. He cited the example of SK Ulu Lubai in Limbang, Sarawak, which had often come out tops academically despite being in an interior region.
Idris said the teachers were from the same pool of 400,000-odd teachers in the country, trained in the same teaching institute, but they outperformed schools in the city.
He said a school in Kelantan had sent 20 of its worst-performing students there and two months later they returned to their hometown and became among the brightest students in school.
“That is why I say that we need to emulate the same teaching methods from these success-story schools. We don’t need to look at Finland or Norway,” he said.
Teach For Malaysia trustee Chen Li-Kai said that while one could learn from the best schools through how they fared in public exams, the focus should be on schools that have made a leap.
“It is not about learning from the best schools, but from the most improved schools,” he said.
Source: FMT
Read the full article here.
Learning Together: Global Lessons in Tackling COVID-19
Sir Michael Barber and Idris Jala discuss the key learnings from our new in-depth report and share insight into the successful practices of the top 20 countries that have maintained a strong recovery in the fight against COVID-19.
Sir Michael Barber and Idris Jala were joined by Dr. Rifat Atun, professor of global health systems at Harvard University, and Dr. Jemilah Mehmood, Special Advisor to the Prime Minister of Malaysia, to discuss the opportunities for global collaboration and learning.
Source: Sir Michael Barber
Watch full webinar here.
RDB pitches 100 investment projects to investors
RDB has collaborated with Pemandu consultation agency to pitch 100 projects to investors for their consideration. With the right financing, these projects could fast track the country’s development
Facing the Nation’s Poultry Problem
The Government has recently imposed export controls on locally farmed chicken in an effort to control prices of the ‘essential product’ for local consumption. This comes on the back of significant public pressure on the rise in the cost of living especially in a post-pandemic environment.
The implementation of price control although altruistic in nature by the Government has side effects that are usually not well understood by the public at large. It is important to recognize that the poultry industry sustains itself by Malaysians for Malaysians. As a general economic rule, business owners increase their prices because factors like supplies have become scarce, or the cost of production has increased. In this case, the recent price hike is impacted by the global turmoil in supply chains caused by the economic sanctions on Russia.
The measure by the Government is a logical approach, but we must be aware of the likely repercussions:
1. The livelihoods of those involved in the poultry supply industry.
2. The tangible and intangible subsidisation of any essential items by the Government
3. The view by investors on whether Government interventions are good for business – in this case, likely to be negative.
It is important to recognize that the root cause of the problem is not malice, but one that is related to the current global supply chains. Support for price controls ideally should be handled at the source. Perhaps it is better to allow prices to float temporarily even if they are very expensive but instead work with the industry to identify catalytic projects that could address the shortage of raw materials that go into the production. There could be a formation of a consortium to buy the raw materials for the industry in bulk. There could even be an opportunity for alternative products to be proposed that are less dependent on the affected raw materials. Ideas like these are not new and have been brought up before in many of the transformation labs on Agriculture PEMANDU Associates have been involved in around the world. Various initiatives that incentivise technology adoption and innovation to catalyse higher productivity and efficiency have been endorsed in these engagements. Some even involve the development of programmes to encourage collaboration amongst small farmers into larger entities to improve economies of scale.
Subsidies and price controls have been important policy tools in many developing countries to promote socioeconomic growth. However, as economies mature, the costs of maintaining such policies begin to outweigh the benefits. As a result, after reaching a certain level of growth, more countries are opting to reduce subsidies in favour of more liberalised policies.
Similarly, Malaysia has maintained a blanket subsidy on fuel for the better part of the last decade to foster economic development. However, the ultimate goal is to eventually transition to a market-price system to encourage fiscal and environmental sustainability – and the first step toward that is to reduce subsidies. The petrol subsidy programme (PSP) was intended to be implemented in tandem with a gradual float of RON95 petrol and diesel prices. The PSP was designed to encourage better fiscal responsibility while still protecting those who needed it the most.
Dato Seri Idris Jala, our President and Chairman, stated in 2010 that “Malaysia could still go bankrupt if annual growth remains below 4%, debt continues to rise at 12% per year, and the country continues to spend borrowed money on operational expenditure such as subsidies.”
In this case of chicken and food security identifying the root cause is vital and addressing it through collaborative efforts and innovative ideas involving the private sector.
At PEMANDU Associates, we believe that transformational initiatives should deliver long-term sustainable impact to the rakyat, with emphasis on improving economic development, attracting investments and job creation. The Government cannot do this alone and will require a winning coalition with relevant private sector companies to make the effort a success. Only then will solutions cease to be stop-gap measures, and instead become sustainable for the long haul.
Woody Ang Woo Teck is joint managing director of Pemandu Associates
Source: The Edge Markets
Read the full article here.
Rwanda: New Projects Expected to Speed Up Country’s Development Targets
More than 50 projects are expected to enable Rwanda to reach its goal of achieving a middle-income economy by 2035, and a developed economy by 2050.
Projects worth more than US$ 6 billion were identified during a four-week workshop that ended yesterday June 10, led by the government, private sectors, banks and consulted by PEMANDU Associates, a global consultancy company, to generate impactful and fast results through collaborative program solving and detailing implementation plans.
The ready-to-go projects identified in Rwanda Private Sector-Led Transformation Program (RPTP) Laboratory using Big Fast Results (BFR) methodology, focused on three areas of;
Agriculture and Agro-processing, Manufacturing and Infrastructure and Energy, and the projects from these areas are expected to contribute Rwf 2.9 trillion to the country’s GDP.
Private investors will play a big role in implementation of the projects, to enhance private sector-led economic transformation.
According to Dennis Karera, the chairperson of Gold Capital Investments, the programme has provided new models to implement projects and shared knowledge between the investors and government in implementation of the projects, to escalate the country’s GDP.
“We have learnt ways to evaluate our projects, at least every one year, set monitoring mechanisms, specify assessment period and to invest in projects that deliver quick impact and are measurable on the GDP, “Karera said.
He requested the programme to be extended at the district level, for the project investors to work with people who also understand the project and the same line, to avoid misunderstandings between authorities and implementers.
Eric Murenzi, a businessman from Umuyenzi City Centre and stakeholder in one the projects in RPTP, said, RPTP will not only benefit business sectors and private sectors, but citizens of the country.
“Investors will not only increase the GDP, they will also create more jobs and more opportunities in Rwanda, with the aim of being the ‘Singapore of Africa’ and becoming a high income country by 2050,” he said.
Murenzi added that Rwanda is a safe country with its government willing to support investors in terms of security provision and especially a great climate calling for more foreign investors.
“The methodologies used to consult here in Rwanda, are the same ones proved to work in other countries like Malaysia, among others we have worked with, 25 of them over the last ten years, ” Aida Azmi, the executive vice president of PEMANDU said.
In her closing remarks, Clare Akamanzi, CEO of the Rwanda Development Board, said investors and the government have to do things differently and new things, to achieve the goals of 2032 and 2050 faster and on time.
“If we keep doing things the way we are doing today, vision 2050 will be achieved in 2077,” Akamanzi said.
She concluded by encouraging investors to identify goals and achieve them on time, in order to enjoy the benefits of their hard work.
RPTP, includes two types of intervention; identifying existing projects that are not implemented optimally, looking at how they make the most out of them to accelerate at 100%, and identifying new projects that do not exist in the country but are possible to be applicable.
The one year project will also ensure these targeted private sector investments are able to realise its intended impact through effective facilitation and problem solving, complemented by relentless monitoring and delivery driven interventions at the highest level of government.
Source: All Africa
Read the full article here.
Rwanda: How RDB is Leveraging Partnerships for Economic Growth
Different stakeholders and partners need to work together if the private sector is to drive Rwanda’s economy and GDP.
This observation comes a few weeks after Rwanda Development Board partnered with PEMANDU Associates, a global consultancy company, to implement the Rwanda Private Sector-led Transformation Program (RPTP).
Rwanda Private Sector-Led Transformation aims to fast-track private sector-led transformation by fostering collaboration and accountability between the government and the private sector.
Larvin Rengasamy, Managing Director at PEMANDU Associates said, “There is a lot of promise in the private sector. We need to get all stakeholders and partners together, if the private sector is to drive Rwanda’s economy and grow the GDP.”
He said that over the past seven weeks, RPTP has been progressive, where the private sector, ministries and government agencies have been collaborative in problem-solving and detailing of projects in an accelerated manner.
“This process is called Lab 50, and it is part of PEMANDU Associates’ Big Fast Results 8 Step Transformation methodology.”
Rengasamy added that through Lab 50, new opportunities worth more than US$6 billion, in three focus areas of agriculture, agro-processing, manufacturing, infrastructure and energy, that are catalytic for Rwanda’s future growth, have been identified and will be clearly detailed.
“The effort now would need to focus on inviting investors in a targeted and selective manner, for quality investments that can assist Rwanda in realising its ambition of achieving a high-income nation by 2050 through private sector investments.”
Desire Rusatira, Head of reinvestment and investor aftercare department at RDB, said PEMANDU is here to help and facilitate how they can address challenges in the private sector.
“What is the gap, and how can it be filled? We have the National Strategy for Transformation (NST1) that can help us reach these goals, since our mission is turning Rwanda’s economy to a private-led economy,” he said.
This is the second-week PEMANDU Associates is working together with RDB to address challenges in the private sector and how present gaps can be filled.
The consultants have partnered with the Government to implement Rwanda Private Sector-Led Transformation Program (RPTP). Key targets of RPTP are GDP contribution, job creation, private sector investments and export potential.
Source: All Africa
Read the full article here.