ICT in Rwanda

Information and Communication Technology is a central engine to driving Rwanda’s transformation to a knowledge based economy, a fact Rwanda has acknowledged by allocating a budget to ICT – as a percentage of its GDP – that is at par with OECD countries.

Rwanda continues to be one of the fastest growing African countries in ICT and there are several avenues for growth for the ICT sector – from e-commerce and e-services, mobile technologies, applications development and automation to becoming a regional center for the training of top quality ICT professionals and research. A robust ICT industry can create wealth, jobs and entrepreneurs.

Rwanda’s ICT competitive advantage

1. Cheap labor compared to other countries in the Region
2. Young and dynamic workforce
3. Most favorable business environment in the EAC (2nd in Africa, WBG Ease of doing business Ranking 2015)
4. Transparency international index 2015 Rwanda ranked as least bribery prone in the EAC, and 3rd in Africa as whole.
5. World class ICT infrastructure
6. Strong & visionary leadership
7. Bi-lingual business environment (French and English)

Mobile broadband penetration

The total number of active mobile telephone subscriptions (90-days revenue generating subscribers) in Rwanda increased from 8,932,108 at the end of June – 2016 to 9,025,516 at the end of July-2016, thereby showing an increase of 1.5%. While postpaid subscription increased from 104,185 at the end of June-2016 to 108,229 at the end of July-2016, the prepaid subscriptions increased from 8,827,923 to 8,917,287 during the same period.

Consequently different sectors especially Financial Institutions and Utilities are increasingly digitizing and mobilizing their products and services, reducing costs and providing compelling new experiences for consumers.

The information and communications technology department

The ICT department has the mandate to facilitate and support development of Rwanda’s ICT sector towards transforming into an ICT hub for the region.

Core responsibilities of the ICT department

• Taking the Lead: As the government institution that fast tracks Rwanda’s development, RDB will spearhead Rwanda’s progress toward building a mature, knowledge-based economy.  RDB/ICT proactively pursues the most urgent challenges hindering Rwanda’s ICT competitiveness and ensures that the highest-value opportunities are captured.

• Laying the Foundation for Economic Growth: RDB/ICT focuses on developing and deploying the critical ICT infrastructure in order to lay the foundation for sustained economic growth.

• Building a Hub of Information and Communication Technology: RDB/ICT will lead the efforts to establish Rwanda as a regional hub for information and communication technology (ICT) with a robust ICT industry, encompassing and facilitating e-commerce, e-services, applications development, and automation. ICT will be harnessed to generate wealth and be a key economic driver.

• Contribute to ICT Policy Formulation: RDB/ICT will spearhead Policy formulation, coordination and implementation for private sector development and economic growth.  Its priority is policy advocacy and ensuring that the best policies and practices are put in place and adopted to facilitate private sector development.

Goals

• Catalyze the development of the ICT sector for economic growth

• Facilitate the deployment of ICTs to enable growth in other sectors

• Attract, convert and support implementation and expansion of local and foreign private investment in ICT sector.

Strategies

• Proactively target investors for the ICT sector and disseminate investment opportunities to them

• Provide accurate and timely responses to investor and stakeholder requests

• Advocate policy changes to improve the investment climate for the ICT sector

• Identify and develop opportunities for private sector investment in the ICT sector

• Undertake project or product development to catalyze private sector involvement in this sector

• Identify and build a niche for the Rwandan ICT private sector, especially for the export markets using a cluster approach

In a bid to stimulate growth in the sector, the government has invested in developing ICT infrastructure to enable service delivery through the following projects:

4G LTE Roll out

As of September 2016, 20 cities are completed and there is continued deployment around the country. The ongoing national roll out plan of 4G LTE Technology, Rwanda will usher in a completely new data era that will open up new opportunities to create businesses, spur innovation and improve people’s lives. The 4G LTE deployment is on track to provide fast internet access to 95% of citizens by 2017.

IT innovation centre (KLab)

Recognizing that innovation is what drives economic growth and ICT is a key facilitator of generating new ideas and new ways of thinking. RDB is committed to preserving a climate that promotes innovation and entrepreneurship in the face of increasing global competition.

The represents the innovation, inspiration, invention, ingenuity and aspirations of our ICT community. It will have major links with centres of knowledge creation, such as universities and research centres which are designed to support the formation and growth of innovative businesses and support the transfer of technology and business skills to on-site startups.

Set up in partnership with the PSF and JICA, the innovation centre is designed to provide an environment that supports the development, commercialization and transfer of technology as well as to promote the concept of growth through innovation.

ICT Center of excellence

ICT skills development is a critical driver of industry growth and Rwanda has formed a strategic partnership with several highly reputed International institutions including Carnegie Mellon University to establish a Center for Excellence that should greatly increase ICT skills. Students are increasingly registering in MSIT and MSECE.

IT innovation centre (kLab)

Rwanda constructed a state of-the-art data hosting facility for public and private sector institutions that will ensure data safety, data protection and reliable service delivery. The internet data center runs on a secure, scalable, resilient, and service-oriented automated cloud computing solution that will provide a consolidated solution composed of networking solutions, high-end processing blade servers, tiered enterprise storage infrastructure and virtualization coupled with disaster recovery capabilities, and data security solutions.

Rwanda constructed a state of-the-art data hosting facility for public and private sector institutions that will ensure data safety, data protection and reliable service delivery. The internet data center runs on a secure, scalable, resilient, and service-oriented automated cloud computing solution that will provide a consolidated solution composed of networking solutions, high-end processing blade servers, tiered enterprise storage infrastructure and virtualization coupled with disaster recovery capabilities, and data security solutions.

ICT Bus

The Mobile ICT Bus Project has played a great role in reducing the Internet access gap and digital divide in rural areas where electricity and access to Internet services is a problem. The ICT Bus is a bus turned into a mobile cybercafés that provide access to information through Internet and other multimedia facilities in rural areas. People are able to get valuable information such as agricultural commodity prices, seasonal weather forecasts, health care strategies, government programs and other relevant information. There are currently 4 of these in deployment.

Key contributions to other projects

1. e-Soko

ESoko, is an electronic market price information system developed to collect and provide real time market prices for agricultural commodities on Rwandan markets. This system seeks to empower farmers by enabling them to make more informed market pricing decisions in order to improve on their livelihood.

Impact:

• This system currently covers 50 markets, with ongoing plans to increase its coverage to 20 additional markets.

• A total of 78 agricultural commodities are surveyed

• Market Agents collect and submit market price information on a weekly basis.

• Major beneficiaries: Farmers; Regional Agriculture Trade Network (RATIN); Eastern Africa Grain Council (EAGC); World food program use the system to negotiate price with farmers.

2. R-HMIS

Rwanda Health Management information System (R-HMIS) This system has been rolled out in each of the country’s over 500 health facilities in the past two years.

Since the roll out of the initial system, many modules have been added and these include, death audit reporting for all maternal, Neonatal, and child deaths, Community Health Information System, eTB-a patient level system for tracking MDR (multi-drug resistant) TB patients as well as the HIV reporting and Disease surveillance system which is currently being transitioned.

The percentage of health centers connected to internet remained at 93.8%, however, increase in number of clinical emergencies supported through RapidSMS is 25%, whyle number of patients at community level tracked using RapidSMS reached 186719 by December 2015 up from 173,131 in 2014, which make an increase of 8%.

3. One Laptop per child

Rwanda has embraced the use of a low-cost, low-power connected laptop, “The XO-Laptop”, developed by OLPC association. This laptop is loaded with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful and self-empowered learning in order to provide educational opportunities for children with limited access.

This project is in line with Rwanda’s vision of transforming the country’s economy into a knowledge-based, technology-led economy, and with providing an opportunity for the young generation to access information and services easily.

Students and teachers with laptops from different schools connect and exchange ideas thus improving teaching, learning opportunities. The project is currently distributing 100,000 laptops and an additional 250 schools are scheduled to receive these laptops by July 2013.

6 clusters were identified to lead the growth and development of the ICT and IT enabled industry in Rwanda, the 6 include;

• Education and Training
• E-government
• Business Process Outsourcing
• Mobile Applications Development
• Cloud computing
• IT Security

The department has five (5) divisions that support it’s mandate:

1^st ICT Security

The ICT Security division’s primary role is to plan, implement and coordinate Rwanda’s ICT Security strategies/plans to ensure efficient cyber-crime preparedness, response, reporting, risk management and policy compliance across government institutions.  Its main responsibilities include:

• Supporting national security by strengthening and maintaining the security and stability of Rwanda’s critical IT infrastructure, systems and information assets;
• Spearheading implementation of ICT security strategic plans and projects for government;
• Supporting the regulator and other government institutions to develop, establish and maintain the appropriate information security legal framework (standards, guidelines and regulations) for the country and enforce adherence and compliance within the GoR; and
• Promoting and advocating for national awareness of information security matters for the country in both public and private sector, and the citizens at large.

2^nd ICT Advisory

The ICT Advisory division is responsible for providing ICT support to government institutions. The support provided entails:

• ICT staff recruitments: This involves assessment of ICT capacity needs in all government institutions and ensure that they are addressed in an efficient and timely manner, adhering to a government-wide ICT career path and international industry standards;
• Technical support: Advising and overseeing implementation of ICT applications/systems in government institutions, and ensuring swift adoption to changing technologies;
• Monitoring and improving Quality of Services (QoS) of deployed ICT applications;

Harmonizing all ICT related procurement needs across government institutions; ensuring that the needs match the required and standard specifications; and administering bulk procurement to ensure value for money is attained while maintaining quality.

3^rd New Project development

The New Product Development (NPD) Division is the Project Management unit of the ICT department in charge of centralized and coordinated management of projects in the ICT department. The New Project Development manages projects according to Project Management Institute PMI® standards. Its responsibilities are categorized as follows:

• Identifying and developing project management methodology, best practices and standards;
• Managing key national ICT projects; from Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring and Control to Closing; thus ensuring timely and successfully implementation of ICT projects;
• Providing project management support for ICT projects implementation across government institutions; and
• Ensuring that project resources are properly managed and projects are successfully implemented

4^th IT Planning and coordination

The IT Planning and Coordination Division is in charge of planning and coordinating implementation of all national ICT projects ensuring that implementation is done in a harmonized and coordinated manner.  Its core responsibilities entails

• Ensuring centralized ICT planning for government and alignment of national ICT strategic plans with EDPRS and Vision 2020;
• Ensuring project prioritization, sequencing, resource planning and allocation to facilitate adequate provision of resources for successful project implementation;
• Monitor & conduct periodic Quality assurance reviews in order to track progress of ICT programs/projects as well as ensure that projects are meeting their intended objectives and outcomes; and
• Monitoring compliance with ICT industry standards, policies, and procedures.

5^th The external support

The External Support Division is responsible for mobilizing and managing donor funds channeled towards implementation of ICT programs/projects. Donor agencies currently supporting ICT projects include the World Bank, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), KOICA, African Development Bank (ADB) and UNECA.

The division’s responsibilities comprise:

• Mobilizing resources and developing an appropriate strategy to attract necessary resources for successful implementation of National ICT projects; and
• Ensuring that projects are implemented according to donor procurement, financing and reporting procedures.

Regional Connectivity Infrastructure Project (RCIP)

The core objective of the RCIP project is to ensure access to all Rwandans thereby reducing the cost of international capacity (broadband connectivity) by extending the geographic reach of Rwanda’s broadband networks.  This will be done by:

• Providing connectivity to all government institutions and all Rwandans;
• Establishing a central broadband international gateway facility (virtual landing point) in Rwanda that facilitates international connectivity;
• Purchasing and/or leasing broadband capacity to connect Rwanda to undersea fiber-optic cables; and
• Building competent technical capacity to manage and operate the acquisition, distribution and management of international broadband connectivity.

The primary responsibility for attracting Foreign Direct Investment in Information and Communication Technology into Rwanda lies with the ICT department in RDB. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) was estimated at US$ 110 m in 2013

Opportunities

Rwanda’s telecommunications market is still dominated by voice-centric mobile services; hence providing unprecedented opportunities for rolling out and accessing data services.

There’s a need to increase the capacity (approximately doubled) to cater for the capacity requirements, when connecting each sector as per the results of the market study. The design capacity to provide connectivity to each sector has been set at 50Mbps per sector.

4G LTE Roll out

As of September 2016, 20 cities are completed and there is continued deployment around the country. The ongoing national roll out plan of 4G LTE Technology, Rwanda will usher in a completely new data era that will open up new opportunities to create businesses, spur innovation and improve people’s lives.

The 4G LTE deployment is on track to provide fast internet access to 95% of citizens by 2017.

Kigali Inoonvation City

Kigali Innovation City is the natural home where indigenous Rwandan technology companies can innovate and serve the whole market of the African continent.

It is also the best home in Africa for multinational technology companies to domicile their subsidiaries, bring their technologies and skills, and conduct the innovation necessary to create optimized products and services for the African market.

Some of the best startups from the region and from anywhere in the world will also find their natural home in the community of Kigali Innovation City.

All technology companies operating in Kigali Innovation City are assured of a scalable supply of high caliber engineers, mathematicians and scientists from co-domiciled higher learning research institutions whose postgraduates are picked from the best on the whole African continent.

This high grade pool of professional talent will also be able to rapidly up-scale their industry skills through the convenience and efficiency of being co-domiciled with a world-class industry skills academy. All technology companies in Kigali Innovation City can access innovation-friendly financing from the co-domiciled Rwanda Innovation Fund. For further details, Click here