The Rwanda Rural Electrification Strategy is a national sectoral strategy with the objective of ensuring that Rwanda’s households have access to electricity through the most cost effective means by developing programmes that will facilitate both the end users to access less costly technologies and increase private sector participation in the provision of these solutions. To enable sustainable development, the primary objective of the strategy is to ensure that by 2018, 70% of Rwandans have access to electricity and that by 2020, 100% of Rwandans have access to electricity. For the above targets to be met, a combination of solutions that focus on the location, income and consumption level is required instead of the traditional connection to the grid that may not be suitable for all households. The four distinct programmes in the strategy include: the provision of basic solar systems as a basic necessity to the less privileged population; the establishment of a risk mitigation facility that will support the private sector; mechanisms that will increase the development of mini-grids in suitable locations; and the continued rollout of the Electricity Access Rollout Programme. To help reducing rural poverty government will offer financial support to address affordability gaps and market failures to enable the lowest earning house-holds entry level energy access as a basic necessity and supply social goods to support the program such as education/promotion and support in the supply chain, and work to establish an enabling framework. Further, the need for a nationwide supply chain and the opportunities in retailing and installing solar home systems represent employment opportunities for local population both during installation and maintenance phases. As part of the sustainability effort recycling and environmental protection will be established. A private sector led approach to recycling these redundant objects will be developed in parallel with entering into agreements with private suppliers. Regarding governance, the Ministry of Infrastructure is the main institution responsible for strategy implementation although its successful implementation will require clear institutional arrangements to cover coordination, implementation, financial intermediation, and monitoring and evaluation.
Rwanda · 2016-06-01