Singapore - 7^th September, 2016- Rwanda Housing Authority (RHA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Singapore Building and Construction Authority (BCA) to cooperate to promote the development of green buildings and cities in Rwanda. The MoU was signed by the Director General, Eng. Didier SAGASHYA, RHA, and Executive Director Mr. Jeffery Neng, BCA, as a landmark of cooperation between the two countries. The signatories agreed to strengthen the areas of capacity building, knowledge exchange and sharing of best practices in green buildings in support of a professional construction industry, and to participate in developing Rwanda’s Green Building Standards.

Rwanda targets mitigating climate change and to follow a sustainable way into the future by applying low carbon development, and green technologies, as well as optimizing resource efficiency. The goal in the building sector is to define, adopt and mainstream building requirements, which are “green”. Rwanda’s policy documents link green building to the use of renewable energies, locally mined and produced or locally fabricated building materials, low energy building standards, resource-efficient technologies and environmental safeguards.

In line with RHA’s mandate to monitor and facilitate sustainable urban development, RHA with the recently founded Green Building Council and other stakeholders in the field will look into developing Rwanda’s own green building standards and practices. RHA also plans to facilitate construction of selected projects applying green building criteria.

The yesterday agreed partnership between RHA and BCA will form a contribution to the mainstreaming of green building within the construction industry in Rwanda, in line with Rwanda’s environmental and housing policies and strategies, especially the National Green Growth and Climate Resilience Strategy by the Republic of Rwanda (2011) and the National Housing Policy (2015). It is intended to promote sustainability in the built environment and increase environmental awareness among professionals in design, planning, engineering, and construction. The collaboration will contribute to leveraging networks for the promotion of best practices for sustainability throughout the entire building supply chain in the industry.

The cooperation between RHA and BCA will be backed by sharing of Singapore’s green building experience in the areas of sustainable building design, construction, material selection, technologies, and other research findings through events organised by RHA and BCA. The MoU will be followed by signing implementing agreements to be specified, that will contain terms and conditions and other details for the implementation of the projects, so that they will most efficiently complement other partnerships contributing to a joint establishment and implementation of a green rating system for construction in Rwanda.

Important cooperation partners of the Ministry of Infrastructure (MININFRA) and RHA in the process defining green building indicators applicable for Rwanda are a German research consortium (Rapid Planning), UN-HABITAT, UNDP and the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI).