Minister of
Energy & Water
Currently, only 6% of Rwandans have access to electricity. Butare explained that Rwanda intends to increase that to 16% by 2012, and, in the long term, they aim to boost that to 35% by 2020.
There are a number of options that the Rwandan government has considered in increasing their generation capacity but all require considerable financial backing, thus Butare’s call to outside investors at the conference. He mentioned that Rwanda intends to go ahead to increase capacity with or without external support but maintained that without funding, the project would take very long.
There are opportunities in Rwanda to explore geothermal, wind, hydropower and solar energy. The biomass opportunities would also be a lucrative means of electricity generation as the methane gas resources in Lake Kivu could potentially produce 700MW for 55 years.