ICT Policy Africa

currently stands at 112 RWF/Kwh for households and RWF 102/kWh for industries, despite GoR
subsidizing the utility. Rwanda’s electricity costs of $0.24/Kwh, almost double that of its
neighbours. 64% of businesses surveyed in the 2008 business investment climate survey cited
access and cost of electricity as a major constraint. As Rwanda strives to increase electricity
generation, ICTs can be leveraged to consolidate Rwanda’s energy sources in order to enable
sustainable energy generation, transmission and distribution through a SMART Electricity Grid
and Energy Market Design.

	
  

Limited access to finance: Lending for ICT companies is constrained by costs and risks arising
from several factors, including: lack of adequate collateral, crowding out by government bonds,
asymmetrical information (caused in part by limited private credit registries), and inadequate
skills to assess and manage risk. Limited lending can also be attributed to Rwanda’s low savings
rate that currently stands at 8% of GDP. GoR should partner with financial institutions to
establish special funding mechanisms to foster ICT industry growth.
Inadequate international bandwidth: Rwanda still does not have sufficient international
bandwidth. Being landlocked, the country is very dependent on neighboring countries for
connectivity, which greatly increases connectivity costs. More importantly, given that ICT is a
competitive industry, this dependence could compromise Rwanda’s information security and
business continuity. This can be remedied through other links to other sea cables such as those
from southern Africa as well as satellite back up. Further, a virtual landing point can be
established locally where telecommunication providers converge and acquire submarine capacity
that can be distributed through their networks.
Inadequate ICT skills: Rwanda has insufficient skilled personnel in the ICT field to drive ICT
development. As such, more ICT professionals will be trained and developed to increase
Rwanda’s ICT skills base.
Low ICT awareness and usage: Most Rwandans are still not aware of the available ICTs and
their benefits. This is largely attributed to the lack of awareness, insufficient content relevant to
the general population and limited rural ICT penetration. ICT in education, community
development and public awareness initiatives will be implemented to increase ICT awareness
among Rwandans.
Nascent private sector: Rwanda’s private sector, particularly the ICT sector, is relatively small.
It is mostly constrained by the high cost of accessing ICTs especially in rural areas, insufficient
payment systems and a lack of innovation. Several initiatives will be implemented to foster ICT
and ICT-enabled sector development including establishing a Technopole (an advanced ICT
park), e-Payment systems, a national access network to increase broadband penetration and
Internet affordability among others in order to foster both ICT and ICT-enabled sector growth.
Inadequate information security: Rwanda’s cyber security needs to be reinforced to mitigate
ever-increasing cyber threats. Cyber security awareness will need to be disseminated and public
private institutional collaboration strengthened. Furthermore, a strong policy, legal and
regulatory framework to ensure cyber security and compliance will be required.
Limited interoperability of government systems: Many government systems work in isolation
of each other, which creates duplication and inefficient resource management. Most processes
are to a large extent paper-based, which creates unnecessary delays. As such ICTs can be
leveraged through e-Government initiatives to further improve government operational
effectiveness and efficiency, thereby improving service delivery to citizens.
NICI III aims to address the above-mentioned challenges while improving Rwanda’s ICT
environment and accelerating services development.
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