Rwanda: Natural Resources and Trade

Natural Resources and Trade of Rwanda

90% of Rwanda population is agriculture. This area is land locked and has very few natural resources. The main exports of Rwanda is tea and coffee. Coffee production of 14,578,560 tons in 2000 compares to a pre-civil war variation between 35,000 and 40,000 tons. By 2002 tea became Rwanda’s largest export, with export earnings from tea reaching US$18 million equating to 15,000 tons of dried tea.[1]

[2]Rwandan cultivating coffee

Photograph of four drying racks containing white coloured unroasted coffee beans

[3]coffee beans drying, Rwanda’s main cash crop

In 2004, mining and quarrying accounted for less than 1% of Rwanda's gross domestic product (GDP).[4]

Mining for minerals in Rwanda include; tin ore, tungsten ore, cement, and columbite-tantalite ore. They also produce natural gas and use lava beds for fertilizer. Rwanda’s mineral industry consisted mostly of small companies or individual miners. Exploitation of the country's peat deposits could become necessary to meet the subsistence farming sector's energy needs, Rwanda's deforestation rate being the third highest in Africa. [5]

Rwanda uses mostly hydroelectric power. Most of the country’s power comes from four hydroelectric stations.[6]

Most industrial activity centers around food processing. Manufacturing and processing establishments have been at the artisan level, turning out items such as pottery, wicker baskets, bricks, shoes, tile, and insecticide. Rwanda has light industry which produces sugar, coffee, tea, flour, cigars, beer, wine, soft drinks, metal products, and assembled radios. Rwanda also has textile mills, soap factories, auto repair shops, a match factory, a pyrethrum refinery, and plants for producing paint, cement, pharmaceuticals, and furniture. War in 1994 severely disturbed industry. As of 2001, only 40% of prewar industries had restarted operations. There are abundant natural gas reserves in Lake Kivu, which Rwanda shares with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Rwanda has expressed interest in exploiting those reserves, and in 2000, the country planned to build an inland methane gas plant.[7]

Rwanda's main commodity exports are coffee (56%) and tea (27%). Other exports include gold (17%) and animal hides and skins (0.9%).[8]