Kigali, 26.2.2015-The government of Rwanda through the Ministry of Infrastructure launched Affordable housing projects entitled “Batsinda II, a low carbon sustainable community, pioneering low cost HOME GROWN building solutions” in Kagugu cell, Kinyinya Sector, Gasabo District in the City of Kigali. The event was officiated by the Honorable Minister of Infrastructure, James Musoni.

This project is a partnership of the Ministry of Infrastructure, the City of Kigali responsible for supervision of the construction work, Rwanda Social Security Board (RSSB) responsible for funding the project, Rwanda Engineering Brigade and Horizon Group for construction. This project targets to put up 10,000 units and the first phase will begin with 609 units in a three storied house designs and the Ministry of infrastructure is committed to provide basic infrastructure of electricity, water & sanitation and roads which will reduce the cost of one unit up to 30 %.

For efficient use of limited land, this project promotes vertical housing design with a density of 82 housing units per Hectare. The neighborhood will include one market, one school, one bus station, three waste water treatment plants and 24 shops for retailing and other amenities for the wellbeing of residents.

 The current gap of urban population that access housing in the formal market is likely to intensify as we develop towards Vision 2020 goals where it targets urbanization rate to increase from 16.5 % (2012) to 35% urban growth. “We are targeting the urban population to increase from 1.7 to 4.4 million people to live in urban areas by 2020”. Minister noted.

Affordable and adequate housing in Rwanda is an urgent issue due to the gap between housing demand and supply for people in low and middle income segments. EDPRS II emphasized on the importance of affordable housing development to support urbanization and made it a high-level priority. The provision of adequate homes and the eradication of informal settlements will require the Government of Rwanda to establish and strengthen affordable housing supply mechanisms.

Rwanda’s Demand for affordable housing in general is estimated to require at least 560,000 Units by 2020 plus all other related socio- economical amenities in addition to current housing supply. From now until 2020, this will require yearly construction of 93,400 units (or 7,780 units monthly). This therefore highlights to you how much severe supply is required to bring down the need for affordable homes and curb down speculation involved.

The government’s policy emphasized on implementation Orders to reinforce Housing regulatory and financial framework and affordable houses will benefit low income earners. Different developable sites of around 106Ha were identified and acquired and good progress in development has been made by different government institutions in partnership with private developers as indicated below. Construction of affordable homes would be primarily the role of private sector. However the government has also engaged semi-private institutions such as Banque Rwandaise de Développement (BRD) and Rwanda Social Security Board (RSSB) in Affordable Housing Development since their mandate includes supporting government priority areas of development.

Even though the first batch of these projects will be constructed in Kigali, expansion into other parts of Rwanda like more sites in Kigali, in secondary cities will continue to be our priority. The current projects in the pipeline to be launched in Kigali are in Rugarama (Nyarugenge), Ndera (Gasabo), Ziniya and  Kanombe (Kicukiro) which all total up to 7480 dwelling units to be  Constructed with respect to available master plans.