29
Mar

29 March 2019: The Government of Rwanda signed Concession and Power Purchasing Agreements worth $ 180 million with Symbion Power Lake Kivu Ltd, a subsidiary of Symbion Power LLC, a USA based company. The signed deal is meant to construct a 56MW plant on the shores of Lake Kivu for the first phase. The new agreements were signed during Rwanda Development Board (RDB) quarterly series of CEO forums that brings together policy makers, implementing agencies and investors to raise awareness on sector opportunities, network and forge partnerships, plus finding solutions to sector challenges faced by investors.

According to the Minister of Infrastructure, Honorable Claver GATETE, Rwanda plans to achieve 521 MW power generation by 2024 from 221MW current installed capacity, with the target to achieve universal access to electricity. We cannot achieve this target without investors like Symbion in private sector, thanks to Lord Irvine Laidlaw for injecting resources in the energy sector. “Said Minister of Infrastructure, during the signing ceremony. He added that, 14 months after the signing of agreements electricity will be fed into the national grid, commending “private sector to explore more opportunities in this sector. He explained that, the extraction of 56 megawatts for phase one, the investor will upgrade former KP1from 3MW to 50MW for the second phase. Symbion project joins another Contour Global on track to generate 100 megawatts under KivuWatt project extracting electricity from Methane Gas of which initial phase has started generating 26 megawatts.

Basing on the current statistics presented by the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Rwanda Development Board (RDB), Emmanuel Hategeka, the energy and mining sectors attracted investments worth USD $ 1 billion over the past three years equivalent to 20% of total investment registered by RDB within that period. The rate of citizens’ access to electricity in 1994 stood at 1% and 9% in 2010, rising to 51% at the end of February 2019. The country targets to connect all citizens in five years.

The RDB quarterly series of CEO forum was organized under the theme” Energy and Mining – Key drivers of the National Strategy of Transformation”. The two sectors contribute a lot to the economy, targeting to create more than 200,000 jobs under the National Strategy for Transformation (NST1), create positive impact on household income as well as moving towards achieving high standards of living for all Rwandans.