Kagame’s Economic Miracle Ranked 36th Most Miserable in the World

The 2025 Hanke Annual Misery Index has delivered its verdict: Rwanda ranks 36th most miserable economy out of 178 countries. More miserable than 142 others. The dominant factor is high lending rates. The so-called economic miracle is, by hard numbers, a high-cost, credit-starved economy that leaves ordinary people struggling while the regime celebrates itself.

For years the official story has been relentless. Rwanda is the Singapore of Africa. The most improved nation. A model of vision, discipline, and transformation. Kigali’s streets are clean, the conference centres glitter, and the president collects awards and honorary degrees.

The propaganda machine never sleeps. Yet when unemployment is double-weighted, inflation and bank lending rates are added, and real GDP per capita growth is subtracted, Rwanda sits firmly in the upper ranks of economic hardship.

High lending rates are not a technical detail. They mean that ordinary Rwandans and small businesses pay painfully for money. Credit is expensive. Investment is constrained. Growth, where it exists, remains concentrated. The regime points to roads, buildings, and order. The index points to the cost of survival and the limited room to breathe for most citizens.

This is not the first time data has contradicted the narrative.

Happiness surveys have repeatedly placed Rwandans near the bottom. Poverty figures have been massaged. Official confidence ratings approach 100 percent while lived economic pressure remains high. The pattern is consistent: when the numbers are inconvenient, the numbers are dismissed. The people must be wrong. The data must be flawed. The miracle remains intact by decree.

A government that demands near-total public confidence while ranking in the top fifth of global economic misery is not running a success story. It is running a carefully managed image operation. Clean streets and controlled messaging do not cancel expensive credit and constrained opportunity. The Hanke ranking simply makes the gap visible in a single, brutal number.

36th most miserable. That is the economic miracle under Paul Kagame.