In the World Bank's annual Doing Business report, which assesses the investment climate in countries worldwide, setting up a business is the first indicator. However, before the new company law came into power, Rwanda was using the 1988 company act which made company registration a cumbersome process taking at least 16 days.

For example, the 1988 company law required the physical presence of at least two shareholders; so if the investor was a foreigner who came to the country on his own, he would have to find a local shareholder to set up his business.

It also required articles and a memorandum of association which in most cases were prepared by lawyers who would charge as much as US$ 1000 for the service. Those should then be certified by a notary public, yet those services were often unpredictable or, at best, only available a few hours per week, thus causing delays. The journey would then lead to the revenue authority to pay registration fees which would depend on the type of business the company would be involved in and later to the registrar general where a certificate of incorporation would be issued.

As part of reforms to improve the business environment, however, now a one-stop-center for business registration has been created. Currently all the applications forms have been merged into one incorporating the functions of Rwanda revenue authority (RRA), social security fund of Rwanda (CSR) and the introduction of a payment point in the registrar general's office.

Moreover, the new company law does no longer require notarization of documents and publication of the articles in the Official Gazette as was the case in the past, and a flat registration fee of Frw 25,000 has been introduced.

Due to these reforms, it takes today only 24 hours to complete incorporation (provided all required documents are in order), and only standard articles of association are necessary.

And this will even be further reduced to twelve hours once the online registry, which is currently being developed by Norwegian Registry Development (NRD), is available.

"The NRD inception report has been approved and they are currently working on the related infrastructure, so we expect the registry to be operational by December this year," says Frank Twagira, the Doing Business reform coordinator in the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), adding that the reforms have led to a spike in business registration.

Eraste Kabera, the registrar general at RDB, confirms that with the new one-stop-center there has been a steady increase in company registration, which he attribute to the significant reduction in costs and time spent in the process.

"It used to cost US$ 433 to register a business, and now it's US$ 43," Kabera says.

Created in May last year, the registrar general's office would initially register 15 companies per day on average, but currently it handles about 50 cases. Last month alone more than 4,000 businesses were registered, including companies and sole proprietorship businesses.

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