RWANDA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Jean Pierre Kesteloot and Penina Ngabire, Liedekerke Great Lakes
Rwanda Aims at Becoming a Key Player in the Aviation Sector in Africa The Republic of Rwanda is a landlocked country situ - ated in the heart of Africa, the world’s second largest and second most populous continent. With a modest land mass of 26,338 km² and an estimated population of 14.5 million, it is the most densely populated coun - try in Africa, and current projections estimate that the population will reach around 21 million in 2050. It is hardly surprising, then, that Rwanda is highly import- dependent. Rwanda has long understood that improving the qual - ity and reliability of transport infrastructure is key to economic development. However, it has to cope with a challenging geography: the country’s topography is very hilly, earning it the nickname “land of a thousand hills”, and the nearest seaports (Mombasa in Kenya and Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania) are 1,500 km and two days away by road. As a result, travel, whether within Rwanda or to and from neighbouring countries, is often long and costly. Over recent decades, Rwanda has significantly increased the capacity of its domestic road network through infrastructure construction, rehabilitation, upgrading and maintenance. Rwanda is now poised to improve regional and international connectivity with the aim of facilitating international trade and reducing transport costs. In doing so, the Rwandan government is pursuing two avenues. First, the government has been planning for years to connect Kigali (the nation’s capital) to the Indian Ocean and the nearest seaports by extending two existing railroads: the so-called “Northern Corridor” connecting Kigali to Mombasa, via Kampala (Uganda) and Nairobi (Kenya), and the ”Central Corridor” con - necting Kigali with Dar Es Salaam. However, both pro - jects are still under discussion and no official schedule has been announced. Second, the government has embarked on the con - struction of the new Bugesera International Airport situated 40 km south of Kigali. This USD2 billion project lies at the heart of Rwanda’s current develop -
ment strategy, and could also be part of the solution to Africa’s lack of connectivity. With railway extension projects somewhat stalled, Rwanda will have to rely above all on its new airport to pursue further economic development. The country also intends to take advantage of a number of con - tinental initiatives and to expand the activities of its national airline, RwandAir, in order to become a key player in the aviation sector in Africa. The Bugesera International Airport in a Nutshell Launched in 2017, the initial project called for the con - struction of a relatively small airport to complement the existing Kigali International Airport and develop RwandAir’s activities. At the time, the project was entirely overseen by Aviation Travel and Logistics Holdings Limited (ATL), a public holding company set up in 2015 to manage aviation activities such as travel, logistics, freights and cargo handling. In 2018, Qatar Airways, which was negotiating with RwandAir to acquire a stake in the Rwandan com - pany, expressed its interest in the project because of Rwanda’s central location in Africa. Aiming to make the new airport its first hub in Africa, Qatar Airways offered to make a significant investment in the project, subject to the implementation of a more ambitious design and the construction of a bigger airport with greater capacity. In 2019, negotiations between the parties came to fruition. ATL and Qatar Airways agreed to finance the construction and run the future airport jointly through their new joint venture company, Bugesera Airport Company (BAC). According to the new design, the facility will boast a 130,000 m² main terminal building with a capacity of eight million passengers a year for the first ten years. It will later be expanded to a capacity of 14 million passengers a year, making it one of the largest airports on the continent. The first phase of construction, which included works on the main horizontal infrastructure such as runways, drainage concrete works, earthwork platforms, aircraft parking and internal service roads, has been complet -
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