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.
