From 15-16 March 2016, cement business leaders from all over the world met in Kigali at 8th Africa Cement Trade Summit to discuss how integrating Africa in the global cement market and emerge trends in the cement industry.

The summit as endorsed and supported by the Government of Rwanda was officially opened by the Minister of Infrastructure, Honorable James MUSONI. The Participants of the Summit are generally business experts, scientists and executives through the cement industry and cement technology community.

The theme of the event is “Positioning in Africa’s Competitive Cement Sector to grow your Market Share” meant to tackle a vital insight on growth of the cement industry in Sub-Saharan Africa , market consolidation and niche opportunities.

In his opening remarks the Minister of Infrastructure Honorable James MUSONI said that the summit happens at the right time, when Africa is jointly gearing its efforts to frame a new approach for its socio-economic transformation through optimizing resources for the benefits of its people, through the Africa Agenda 2063.

“Indeed, a new approach is required for the continent to meet its critical infrastructure needs, thus meeting its development agenda. This infrastructure investment outlook stimulates mega-projects, which in turn necessitate considerable resources including cement.” The Minister said.

Minister Musoni also argued cement business leaders to produce adequate cement on affordable prices in line with facilitating customers. “The cement demand in Africa remains high, but the domestic production capacity has not yet matched the demand, and as matter of fact, most African countries are heavily dependent on importation of cement”.

Due to this fact, the Minister of Infrastructure called upon the summit participants to address issues related to Strategies to support the local cement production, innovative approaches to enable local producers to be competitive on regional and international cement markets, efficient and consistent energy options in support of cement producers and new investors and resources to be manufactured and supplied locally.

G. Seelan the CEO of Centre for Management Technology which organized this summit said they selected Rwanda as a host because of its tremendous development progress.

“ Rwanda was selected to host the summit because of its the tremendous progress in the last few years , many of our customers in cement industry and international companies are very keen  to come and see Rwanda’s progress and see how they can invest in the country” .He said
In Rwanda, the current cement production has increased to 600, 000 tons per year from 100,000 tons per year, given the inauguration of the CIMERWA cement plant last year. The country has been importing more than 500,000 metric tons of cement to meet its demand .

The new production will allow the country to export about 30% of its total cement production annually to regional countries like Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo. The country has set a target of reducing its trade deficit with an aim to boost cement exports by 28% every year by 2018.