More than 7 million Rwandans do their banking through their cellphones, but many of the agents who facilitate the banking transactions never declared their income to the country’s tax authority. Now the tax authority has started taking a 15-percent withholding tax from these agents’ incomes with the cellphone provider, plunging some of these agents into financial turmoil.
In Rwanda, where agriculture drives the economy, a cow is a symbol of wealth. To help the rural poor, the government has for more than a decade been giving select rural families one cow each, but the animal is not a simple gift.
As Rwanda’s reforestation efforts push up the price of traditional wood energy sources, some Rwandans are left wondering where they’ll get the fuel to cook their next meals.