Kigali, 2nd December 2019 - On Monday, Prime Minister Dr Edouard Ngirente presented before the joint session of both chambers of the Rwandan Parliament, the achievement of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in line with expediting the country’s knowledge-based economy.

Prime Minister Ngirente pointed out that the Government’s decision to promote ICT and making it an important pillar towards achieving a knowledge-based economy, has provided tangible benefits.

123,670 jobs related to ICT were created, between 2000 and 2019, both in public and private sectors. Those jobs include four thousand agents employed by Irembo platform and 107,858 people working with ICT companies and App industry.

“In the telecommunication services, 77% of Rwandans use a mobile telephone while 51.6% have access to internet. 300 services from public and private sector use ICT, and this is mainly seen in the increase of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP),” Prime Minister Ngirente said.

To promote good services in Rwanda, Prime Minister outlined different applications and programs introduced in most of the key sectors such as Agriculture, infrastructure, health, education, justice, to mention but a few.

Prime Minister told parliamentarians that the whole country is connected to Fiber optic cable with around seven thousand kilometres and that since 2012 to 2018, more than USD800 million were invested in the ICT infrastructure. 

The 4G LTE coverage that was launched in Rwanda in 2013, can now cover the whole country and can be effectively used at 73%.

Prime Minister pointed out that a platform known as Irembo was introduced to reduce the cost and time that citizens were taking to seek services at the local and Central Government offices. For now, Irembo platform provides 98 public services.

The premier also revealed that after the introduction of the Elections Management System, the Government has saved FRW 700 million during the preparations of the 2015 elections, since in 2003 the National Electoral Commission had used FRW 1 billion in the electoral process, while in 2015 it only used FRW 300 million thanks to this application.  

For the whole presentation in Parliament, click here