Vision 2050

The capital has been ranked the cleanest city in Africa.

The president has a 35,000-seat sports arena, a partnership with Qatar Airways building a $2 billion airport, and a vision document called Vision 2050 that says, with a straight face, that this country will be a high-income economy by mid-century.

So what happened? How did a country with no oil, no coastline, no significant minerals of its own, and the freshest mass grave on the continent become the development darling of every World Bank delegation, every African finance minister's PowerPoint, and every think tank in Washington? And here's the part nobody puts on the brochure.

What is it costing them to pull it off? Today, we're cracking open Rwanda's economic blueprint.

Rwanda has tried to replicate all four.

Let's look at each one with actual numbers.

On human capital, Vision 2050's targets, per the official MinerKofind document, include raising the working-age population's productivity to drive a knowledge-based economy by 2035.

The country has invested heavily in education and health infrastructure.