Kigali, 2^nd August, 2016 - The Government of Rwanda has made a large strategic progress in Urbanization and Housing sector, 22 years after the Genocide against the Tutsi. Country cities are now fashioned with modern buildings, population in rural areas have access to vital infrastructure facilities as an outcome to rural settlement national policy.

Tremendous achievements in the sector have been accelerated by various initiatives put in place by the Government. These creativities incorporate facilitating private sector engagement in housing; enabling harmonized local development management; bundling public resources toward improved urban management and well-managed growth as well as improved institutional capacities. 

Housing sector is a high level priority for the Government of Rwanda to ensure access to formal housing for all households independent of their income level. The Government of Rwanda is establishing a framework which facilitates private-sector-led housing construction. In the foreground of the 2015 adopted National Housing Policy is the issue of how to enable access to housing for all. The policy and its implementation strategy are well under implementation and the following progress has been made:

Prime Minister Instructions Determining the Conditions and Procedures for Obtaining Government Support for Affordable Housing Projects are a step toward the collaboration with the private sector in housing delivery and a commitment to financing inner-neighborhood infrastructure by the Government under set conditions. The conditions relate to profiles of beneficiaries of the housing units, affordability of access schemes to housing which may either look at the sales prices or affordability of financing schemes, and to resource-efficiency and local skills enhancement through collaboration with local SME’s.

The Law Relating to Investment Promotion and Facilitation incentivizes investment in affordable housing. It offers tax incentives to investment in affordable housing, such as a preferential corporate income tax rate and accelerated depreciation for investments in construction projects worth USD 1,8 Million or more.

The Government engages in a housing development PPP for a sustainable, mixed-use housing neighborhood development as part of a steering committee. Detailed designs for the project called Batsinda II with above 500 housing units are completed and the construction is about to kick off.

Seven housing development sites with a total land area of about 257.5 ha are open for investors to develop with similarly high objectives in support of higher density and mixed use, which is envisioned to assist residents in increasing their socio-economic levels due to the proximity to local economic opportunities. At least 22,000 housing units are estimated to result from this.

The local production of construction material is gradually being increased, e.g. local production of cement and of new, innovative and home-made solutions for structural and non-structural walling materials.