Has Rwanda been fiddling its numbers?

AT THE HEART of Rwanda’s capital sits the Kigali Convention Centre, a $300m monument that lights up the night with the national colours of blue, yellow and green. It symbolises modernity and prosperity in a country that has bounced back from a genocide in 1994 when perhaps 500,000 people, mostly Tutsis, were killed.

As impressive as the skyline are Rwanda’s economic statistics. In the past decade the economy has expanded by 8% a year. The share of people classified as poor has fallen by seven percentage points since 2011, to 38% in 2017.