Rwanda: High Expectations for Broadband
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
Last week at the sidelines of the third annual African e-governance Forum held in Kigali (Rwanda) for 3 days, World Bank Country Manager Victoria Kwakwa noticed that despite the huge success of mobile communications, broadband remains expensive and unavailable in many regions in Africa.In Rwanda for instance, internet broadband costs $3,000 per Mbps, which makes it a luxury product in a country where more than half of the population lives with less than a $1 a day, hence the government initiative to invest more than $100 million to shrink the cost to $25 per Mbps by 2010. The project will enable the country telecommunications backbone to be linked to the coastal submarine cable expected by 2010.
According to an official information from the telcommunications regulator (RURA), internet penetration covers only 5% of the population and the country accounts 3 licensed ISPs; MTN Rwanda, Rwandatel and Artel.