Rwandan Business Meeting Etiquette

Being a collective and relationship-based culture, Rwandans like face-to-face and long meetings. People do not necessarily respect the start, break and ending time like Anglo and Asian cultures. It is important that you do not become obviously frustrated by this flexible attitude to time as relationship is seen of far greater importance than time-related issues.

The combination of being non-expressive and hierarchical makes Rwandan meetings non-confrontational and sometimes led and dominated by the manager. People rarely give their opinions until they are called upon.

Most of the meetings will have an agenda but do not expect it to be followed. Though people will try to cover all the issues on the agenda they do not necessarily follow the order on the written document. Sometimes unexpectedly raised issue will take half of the time of the meeting.

Author

This country-specific business culture profile was written by Keith Warburton who is the founder of the cultural awareness training consultancy Global Business Culture. 

Global Business culture is a leading training provider in the fields of cross-cultural communication and global virtual team working.  We provide training to global corporations in live classroom-based formats, through webinars and also through our cultural awareness digital learning hub, Global Business Compass.

This World Business Culture profile is designed as an introduction to business culture in Rwanda only and a more detailed understanding needs a more in-depth exploration which we can provide through our training and consultancy services.