Kigali, 06 March 2018: Rwanda has signed an MoU with Community Road Empowerment (CORE) on Partnership in the Project “Sustainable Youth Employment through Road Improvement taking Locally Available Material Based Approach. Subsequently, CORE received funding that will enable maintenance of feeder roads using Do-nou Technology, an ancient Japanese technique that requires only bags, soil and gravel.

‘Do-nou’ is a Japanese word meaning wrapping soil in a gunny bag. The road construction technology, used over 100 years ago in Japan, is a soil reinforcement technique using geotextile materials preferably gunny bags in civil engineering construction.

On 27 February 2018, the Government of Japan signed a grant contract with Community Road Empowerment (CORE), to provide $294,992 for implementing a project named “Sustainable Youth Employment through Road Improvement taking Locally Available Material Based Approach”.

The project will be implemented in four districts (Rulindo, Gakenke, Nyamasheke and Rusizi) in the next 12 months and at least 12 districts will be reached in the next three years.

At the signing ceremony, Japanese Ambassador to Rwanda, H.E. Takayuki Mayishita said that the biggest benefit of this new technology is to create jobs for youth, rural connectivity using very cheap and available materials.  “At least 168 youths will be employed to train other 55,000 rural youths in using the Do-nou Technology to maintain between three to 10 kilometer road networks in each district benefiting over 16,000 residents countrywide annually”, Ambassador Takayuki mentioned.

“Besides the project providing skills in unpaved road maintenance using Do-nou technology for youth groups, it will encourage them to set up companies that will play a role in the labour market to reduce youth unemployment,” said Kei Nakajima, project manager of CORE.

Engineer Jacob Kiplagat, who is in charge of training the youth in using the technology, said that learning this technology takes a short time.

“It takes five days or a week to train someone and there is no need for an education qualification to learn how to use this technology.

Do-nou technology is applied in the construction of dam embankments, road maintenance, culvert and bridge construction, flood routing dykes, footpaths in flooded areas, building foundations and retaining walls. So far this method of maintenance feeder roads has been implemented in 25 countries and currently only applied in Kenya among Africa countries.