Rwanda has set itself an ambitious development path. Vision 2050 aims for upper-middle-income status by 2035 and a low-carbon, high-income economy by 2050, while the country’s updated climate commitments under NDC 3.0 require significant emissions reductions by 2035. Reaching these goals at once raises a question that every country pursuing a green transition must answer: how do policy choices on climate and industry affect jobs, skills, incomes, and emissions across the economy? And how can governments weigh those effects before deciding which policies to pursue? In Rwanda, where over 70 percent of the workforce depends on agriculture, a climate-sensitive sector marked by low productivity and significant decent work deficits, getting these choices right is what allows the transition to cut emissions while also driving growth and creating more and better jobs.
16 June 2026
Growing, Greening and Creating Jobs in Rwanda
To assist the Government of Rwanda in answering these questions, PAGE, under ILO’s lead, supported a five-day workshop in Kigali centered on the Just Transition Assessment Model (JTAM). It brought together 20 representatives from the ministries of finance and economic planning, trade and industry, and transport, as well as business and workers’ organizations, the University of Rwanda, and sectoral bodies.
The JTAM is a nationally calibrated macro-economic modeling framework, developed by the ILO with the University of Rwanda and SINTEF, an independent Norwegian research organization, and built on Rwanda’s national accounts, as well as labour market and emissions data. It integrates climate, energy, economic, labour market, and social indicators, allowing policymakers to test how policies — from carbon pricing to NDC measures and labour market interventions — would affect employment, skills, GDP, emissions, and distributional outcomes. Over five days, participants learned to use the model and to run projections assessing how existing Rwandan policies affect economic growth, employment, the formality of enterprises and workers, and GHG emissions. The exercises drew on enterprise data from a PAGE study of Rwanda’s agro-processing sector to ground them in the national context.
“The Just Transition Assessment Model is very important for the Rwandan government […] this will inform many policies and especially the NDC […] not only concerning the environment but across policies in Rwanda […] and the ownership starts with this training.”
Dr. Jean Baptiste Ndikubwimana, University of Rwanda
"This tool will be helpful because we interact with many sectors […]. Through our projections (with the model), it will be easy to see how our investments in a sector or industry are positively affecting other sectors."
Mr Adrien Bimenyimana, Private Sector Development Specialist and Planner, Ministry of Trade and Industry
Longstanding PAGE support in Rwanda’s pursuit of a just transition
This work did not start with the workshop. Since Rwanda joined PAGE in 2022, the partnership has supported the integration of green economy, environment, and climate change priorities into the National Strategy for Transformation(NST-2) and the implementation and revision of Rwanda’s NDCs. In 2024, for instance, PAGE initiated the development of an assessment model for evidence-based policy formulation and decent job creation. In 2025, a PAGE-supported social dialogue in Kigali brought government, workers, and employers together to discuss how just transition principles could be embedded into NDC 3.0, principles the adopted NDC now explicitly reflects.
The workshop marks a significant milestone in that journey: the transfer of key capacities to national institutions. A major outcome was the formal handover of JTAM to Rwandan national authorities, so the country can run scenarios with its own data, on its own terms, as policies evolve. Participants also established a national modelling team, with agreed roles, data-sharing arrangements, and inter-agency coordination to keep the model in active use well beyond the workshop.
What the model shows
The scenarios produced during the workshop illustrate why this capacity matters. On the current path, Rwanda can meet its economic growth targets, but emissions will continue to rise, missing the NDC targets. A stronger push on clean technology can address that. But combining emission reductions with job creation requires roughly 93 percent more financial effort from firms, which means government support and incentives will play an important role. These are the trade-offs that policymakers need to see clearly, and early, to design a transition that works for both the economy and the people in it.
Grounded in evidence
To anchor the model in the realities of Rwanda’s economy, the workshop drew on the findings of an ILO supported study of the agro-processing sector — a national priority under NST-2. It found that enterprises using energy more efficiently also tend to be more productive, and that better working conditions go hand in hand with higher labour productivity — evidence that climate, competitiveness, and decent work objectives can reinforce one another. It also showed what policy action should tackle first: : high input costs, limited access to finance, and growing exposure to climate shocks, which hit the smallest firms hardest.
Combining enterprise-level evidence with macro-level modelling lets national targets and ground realities inform one another, giving the just transition agenda a concrete footing in the sectors where a majority of the Rwandan population works.
Setting the right course with PAGE support
PAGE has supported Rwanda’s green economy transition since the country joined the partnership in 2022, working with government partners to embed green economy priorities into national planning frameworks and public finance systems. This workshop builds on that collaboration, strengthening national capacity, equipping policymakers, research institutions and social partners with practical tools, and helping Rwanda chart a transition that is economically competitive, socially inclusive, and environmentally sustainable.
