Role of special economic zone on job creation in Rwanda

Abstract

The study investigated the role of special economic zone on job creation in Rwanda. The objectives of this study were to find out categories of jobs created since KSEZ’s inception; to find out which industries have created more job opportunities, to find out the duration of employment, and to seek companies’ opinions on what should be done to create more jobs. The study acquired the qualitative and quantitative approaches; the study used all 69 companies that are operational in KSEZ Phase I&II. The respondents size of this study were 140 respondents included by sixty nine human resource managers and sixty nine CEOs from 69 operational companies in KSEZ, and two respondents from PEZ as operator of KSEZ. The Instruments of data collection were the open ended Questions, and documentary instruments. During the study, the results are presented in accordance with the research objectives. Where, there are more females (69.6 percent) in Human resource management department than males, whereas males occupied 65.2 percent of chief executive officers in KSEZ. Thus the highest of number of human resource managers are found to be in 41-50 age bracket (40.6 percent), whereas 55.1 percent of CEOs are above 51years of ages. Data obtained shows that companies that are in clothing and garment industry and companies involved in food prcessing generated more jobs respectively 38.5 percent of jobs created in KSEZ are tailors and 22.1 percent of job created in KSEZ are food processing personnel, that is to say that two highlited jobs occupied majority that is 60.6 percent of total jobs in KSEZ. Findings on the propositions given for creating more jobs in KSEZ are that Rwanda Government should continue to create other new industrial parks around the country which give more job opportunity to citizens, they should also continue to sustaining the security and infrastructure attracting foreign investors to invest in our country and reduce the rate of taxation to the industries that create more jobs citizens like these garment companies, food processing companies. As to conclude, the objectives of the study were achieved, the problem of the study was solved, and the questions answered by saying that there is significant relationship between SEZs and job creation in Rwanda based to information collect from KSEZ. Government of Rwanda is recommended to continue looking different strategies to be used in reducing unemployment rate in Rwanda.