Reshaping Urbanization in Rwanda : Internal Migration in Rwanda

The objective of this report is to inform the government's policies and strategies on urbanization as a driver of economic development, job creation, and poverty reduction. Note two examines internal migration in Rwanda, which is a recent phenomenon and remains fairly limited, with less than 10 percent of the population changing their district of residence in the three years between 2011 and 2014. Rural-to-urban migration has increased slightly as a share of internal migration, and with internal migration increasing overall, the absolute number of people moving from rural to urban areas has grown. The spatial disparities in living standards offer a compelling motivation for people in lagging areas to move closer to economic density. This note takes a closer look at the scale and nature of internal migration in Rwanda. This note is organized as follows: section one gives introduction. Section two presents the scale and pattern of internal migration, focusing particularly on rural-to-urban migration and the secondary cities. Section three sketches the characteristics of migrants, focusing on push and pull factors and disaggregating by type of migration. The final section four concludes