Rwanda Telecommunications Sector Performance Review 2007

Rwanda
Rwanda
Executive Summary
The following report presents the status of ICT development in Rwanda
as an outcome of the national policy regulatory environment and measured
in terms of indicators for access and penetration resulting from policy
and regulatory measures. The report is part of a wider continental
study undertaken by Research ICT Africa! Network and should be read
in conjunction with the comparative analysis of the country reports
available at http://www.researchICTafrica.net.
Rwanda is amongst the few African countries that embarked on developing
an integrated ICT Policy in the late 1990s with a clear vision of making
ICT an integral part of its global socio-economic development plan,
with the hope that the country would move from an agricultural-based
economy into a knowledge-based economy through the development of
competitive service-based industries.
The country has gone through major economic reforms, including
telecommunications reforms, that aimed at increasing the competitiveness
of the telecommunications industry and attracting foreign investment.
Amongst those reforms was the establishment of an independent
regulatory body known as the Rwanda Utility Regulatory Agency
(RURA). The main mission of RURA is to promote fair competition,
improve quality of services, create an enabling environment to attract
investors with the intention of improving the provision of services to citizens
in accordance with the Universal Access obligations set by the
International Telecommunication Union.
Despite a high level of political commitment to take ICT development forward
as a priority, the current trend in the sector’s development reveals
several gaps that need to be addressed if the country expects major
returns within the coming 20 years. Those gaps are related to issues of
access to and affordability of ICT services in addition to weak institutional
capacity, as well as institutional structural challenges. Meanwhile,
in order to address those gaps, a number of programmes and projects
are underway within the National Information and Communication
Infrastructure Plan (NICI II Plan) framework. These focus on increasing
network access around and outside the country over satellite and fibre
technologies, increasing the efficiency of government service provision
through a variety of programmes, and establishing applications in support
of good governance and poverty alleviation, with special attention
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