Ron Weiss, the Chief Executive Officer of Rwanda Energy Group (REG) mentioned it on Tuesday, 14th January as he announced new electricity tariffs revising them from Rwf192 per kilowatt-hour (KWh) in 2018 to Rwf 186 per KWh.
Currently, 53% of households (about 1.4 million houses) in Rwanda have access to electricity including 1 million connected to the grid while the remaining 400,000 use off-grid electricity.
“We have up to 2.8 million households with no access to electricity and we have doubled efforts to connect them to the grid. However, we are anticipating that in the next 4 years, a million other houses will be built, meaning we will have to provide electricity to at least 2.4 million households by then. However, the major hindrance we are facing is the large budget required to achieve our objective. We need $850 million to achieve our target.”
Weiss said that with the support of partners in the energy sector, they are confident that 100% of households will have access to electricity by 2024.
Rwanda Development Board (RDB) recently announced that in 2019, Rwanda banked new investments worth $2.46 billion (Rwf 2300 billion). The energy sector accounts for 45% of new investments including the construction of the Rusizi III dam worth $613 million, the Gasmeth Energy Project worth $442 million and the Nots Solar Lamps project worth $72 million.
There are also several other energy projects including Gisagara Peat Power Plant that is expected to provide 80 Megawatts, Rusumo high dam which will provide 80 Megawatts as well and Rusizi IV high dam expected to provide 287 Megawatts that will be shared between Burundi, DRC, and Rwanda.
Wess said that by 2024, Rwanda will have 556 Megawatts which will be enough to supply electricity to all households and industries in Rwanda. To achieve this, he said REG plans on building more transmission lines to ease access to electricity.
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