Business
The 2021 Companies Law in a system deliberately migrating to the common law
Law 007/2021 governs companies on a substantially common-law model, replacing the 2009 law. Rwanda joined the Commonwealth in 2009, legislates in English, and has built commercial courts and an international arbitration centre on common-law lines — a deliberate migration from its Belgian civil-law inheritance.
Key rules
- Jurisdiction — The Commercial High Court and commercial chambers hear company disputes; the Rwanda Development Board is the registrar.
- Deadline — Company registration: completed online through RDB, typically within six hours
- Deadline — Annual return: filed with the Registrar General
Governing law
- Law n° 007/2021 governing companies
- Law n° 017/2021 relating to insolvency and receivership
- Law establishing the Kigali International Arbitration Centre
In practice
Rwanda is the clearest case in Africa of a state deliberately changing legal family. Since 2008 it has legislated in English on common-law models, created specialised commercial courts, and adopted company and insolvency statutes closer to New Zealand and English precedents than to the Belgian codes it inherited. Describing Rwanda as a civil-law jurisdiction is now misleading, but so is calling it a pure common-law one: the civil codes still govern much of private law.