Kigali, Rwanda - Joe Ritchie isn’t African, or even a politician.  And yet, the American millionaire stock trader has been appointed to one of the highest government positions in Rwanda.

As CEO of the new Rwanda Development Board, the Chicago-based businessman will have “a blank check” to make sweeping institutional changes in the small east African nation still struggling to rebuild 15 years after genocide claimed 800,000 lives. 

“It’s a unique position,” said Ritchie.  “You have opportunities to fix things that other people can’t, or won’t.”

Ritchie was originally introduced to Rwanda nearly a decade after a 1994 civil war and a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign left it one of the most impoverished and unstable countries in the world. 

Former rebel leader-turned Democratic President Paul Kagame bucked the despot trend seen in neighbors like the Democratic Republic of Congo, outlawed corruption, and aims to make Rwanda a middle-income, knowledge-based country by 2020. 

To reach these goals and drum up interest and investment in his struggling country, Kagame turned to American business leaders for advice.  At their first meeting at a private dinner in 2003, Ritchie was impressed by both Kagame and the social and economic growth Rwanda had achieved, and offered his networking skills. 

“I knew right away, the guy is unique.  I said ‘Ok, I’ll join the team,’” said Ritchie.  “If you take what we know about Africa, the biggest problem is self-centered leadership.  Here you have a country where the leadership is really committed to doing what’s right for the people, rather than just consolidating their own power.”

Doing what’s right for the people has led President Kagame to seek out international investors to bolster Rwanda’s private sector, a move modeled on previous turmoil-to-titan success stories such as Singapore and Ireland. 

Kagame has actively courted international partnerships and investments for the last decade, crisscrossing the globe to meet with CEO’s and former heads of state, attracting a who’s who list of celebrity supporters including Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Rick Warren. 

It’s an inside-out approach that goes against the traditional model of garnering government legitimacy, then courting private sector support.  “When heads of state go to Washington, their dream is to see the President, and maybe next the Secretary of State,” said Ritchie.  “To say ‘don’t go to Washington, Washington will come to you if we go to the private sector,’ now that’s an interesting concept.  But it has happened exactly that way.”

Ritchie will head the new Rwanda Development Board, which aims to create reforms, streamline business laws and eliminate inefficiencies within the government to encourage private sector development.  As global economic markets threaten to crumble, Rwanda hopes to potentially benefit, positioning itself as an alternative investment locale. 

“We hope to make Rwanda into a safe haven for investments that might be running out of some volatile markets,” said Francis Gatare, RDB’s new Principal Deputy CEO and former director general of the Rwanda Investment and Export Promotion Agency.  “We want to give assurances, provide investment opportunities and ensure that investments will be safe.”

As the overseer of many government agencies, and accountable only to the President, Ritchie has a powerful position that in other countries might have raised red flags if given to a foreigner.  But, “the global impact of the American business sector is clear, and there’s a lot to learn from them,” said Gatare. 
“To understand their way of doing business, and communicate the opportunities here in Rwanda, you cannot think of anybody who understands it better than an American businessman,” said Gatare.  “[Ritchie] brings in the new approach that we want.”

Business leaders within Rwanda share their support of Ritchie’s appointment to the national leadership position, a move that could attract new international investment. Ritchie is a “huge advocate in showing how you can make different government sectors, which can drive enterprise by taking them out of that bureaucratic system,” said Arthur Karuletwa, owner of Rwanda-based international distributor Bourbon Coffee.  “It’s who will do things to make things work, that are not in the normal government realm.”

For the foreseeable future, Ritchie will operate outside the “normal government realm” by spending two weeks of every month in Rwanda’s capital city of Kigali, and two weeks in his home city of Chicago.  After the last of his children have left home, he will consider making the move to Rwanda permanent.  Until then, Ritchie will lend his considerable business acumen to a position, and nation, which could greatly benefit from it.

It’s about “looking at the world differently, being able to appreciate what [Rwanda’s] got in a way even they can’t quite, being able to sell it in a way they can’t quite,” he said.  “I can do that.”

- Originally reported December, 2008