Rwanda's Land Policy Reform: Self-Employment Perspectives from a Case Study of Kimonyi Setor

Rwanda’s Land Policy Reform promotes agri-business and encourages self-employment. This paper aims to analyze the situation from a self-employment perspective when dealing with ex-propriation risk in rural areas. In this study, we conducted a structured survey addressed to 63 domestic units, complemented by focus groups of 47 participants from Kimonyi Sector. The bi-nary logistic regression analysis revealed that having job alternatives, men heading domestic units, literacy skills in English, and owning land lease certificates (p < 0.05) are positively and significantly related to awareness of land expropriation risk. The decision of the head of the domestic unit to practice the main activity under self-employment status is positively influenced by owning a land lease certificate, number of plots, and French skills, while skills in English and a domestic unit’s size have a positive and significant influence on involvement in a second activ-ity as self-employed. Information on expropriation risk has no significant effect on self-employment. The domestic unit survey revealed that 34.9% of the heads of domestic units only have one job, 47.6% have at least two jobs in their everyday life, 12.7% have a minimum of three jobs, and 4.8% are inactive. The focus group synthesis exposed the limits to self-employment ability and facilities.