Kigali, 10th March, 2017-Rwanda has attended the third Powering Africa Summit held in Washington DC, USA, from 8 to 10 March 2017. Powering Africa is an investment conference to showcase power, trade and infrastructure opportunities across the African continent, engaging principle decision makers from the American and African public and private sectors to explore how project bankability can be increased.

The infrastructure Minister Honorable James MUSONI who also represented Rwanda delivered a presentation on developing markets; powering economic development as a strategic audit of Rwanda’s electricity in transformation

The Powering Africa: Summit is a platform to showcase power, trade and infrastructure investment opportunities across the African continent, engaging decision makers from the American and African public and private sectors to explore how project bankability can be increased.

The summit brings together World renowned leaders, investors and energy practitioners from around the globe to map the way for project investment, giving a platform to global investment funds and the role they can play in driving forward the development of Africa’s power sector.

Rwanda is among 18 countries that were represented at PAS. These included senior public officials and private sector leaders contributing to the panel discussions, workshops and keynote presentations, outlining opportunities for investors in energy and infrastructure projects.

Powering Africa Summit is an occasion for American and African leaders to highlight infrastructure investment opportunities, and boost trade across the African continent. On the other hand, it is a platform for decision makers from the American and African public and private sectors to interact and explore how best energy projects’ success can be ensured.

Speaking on behalf of H.E. Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda, the Minister of Infrastructure, and Hon. James Musoni highlighted the fact that Africa is a continent endowed with untapped abundant natural resources and a sizeable market.

He noted that the continent still lags behind in terms of economic development. Now, it is common knowledge that there is a strong correlation between economic prosperity and electricity access.

Therefore, there is certainly a huge investment opportunity in the power sector in Africa today, and particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Talking about the experience of Rwanda, Minister James shared strategies and best practices implemented by the Government to address such challenges.

In the short to medium term, the country came up with connecting remote areas using a combination of off-grid solutions and mini-grids, while developing a strategy to ultimately connect them to the grid in the long-term.

Like other parts of the world, Africa should strive to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 7) of universal access to modern energy has taken a definite stance on solving energy-related issues to match great development aspirations which led to major reforms in the energy sector enabling the country to  triple electricity Access from 9% in 2010 to 31% as of January 2017 (On-grid 28% and 3% off-grid), double power generation capacity between 2010 and January 2017 and decrease households and industrial tariffs by 51% and 30% respectively as of December 2016, to boost electricity demand by encouraging heavy industries.

Participants to Powering Africa Summit discussed important issues behind energy sectors worldwide such as the connection and the remotest of villages to the grid, the ways for energy projects to benefit from diversified financing from Public and Private Investments and strategies to control capacity development in the countries where strategic investments are made.

In a bid to diversify financing and attract private investments, Rwanda set up a Government arm, the Rwanda Development Board (RDB)-an institution mandated to help the country’s development through private sector participation in the national development and serving as a one-stop-center for investments.

Similarly, the Minister mentioned the efforts for the Government to embrace the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model, and Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) between developers and the GoR to achieve the power generation targets.

He further mentioned the long-term target for the Government of Rwanda to set up a national organ dedicated to Capacity Development - the Capacity development and Employment Services Board (CESB) - to respond to these needs and train an adequate number of experts in the energy sector and all other key sectors for the development of our country.

He called all participants to the conference to play a critical role in further strengthening Capacity development in the energy sector in our respective countries. Moreover, regional Power pools should be reinforced to meet the supply needs in our regions, which would require a proper regulatory framework to manage wheeling charges and the protection of interconnections.

Finally, the Minister’s remarks ended with a quote of  His Excellency President Kagame; “The challenges facing our continent are well-known, but the enormous potential here, is just as obvious.

By working together with a sense of urgency for Africa to keep getting better, we can all do our part to keep things moving in the right direction.”