"The Internet is a needed public utility as much as water and electricity," declared President Paul Kagame at the Transform Africa summit, held in Kigali, Rwanda's capital city, last October to discuss the future of broadband in Africa.
The choice of Kigali as host did not surprise Information Communication Technology (ICT) experts; Mr. Kagame's government takes ICT so seriously that it aims to creating an ICT infrastructure comparable to any in the developed world. The choice was also not surprising since Rwanda hosted the Connect Africa summit in 2007 that championed broadband connectivity for the continent.
Read more: Big dreams for Rwanda's ICT sector - Success story is grabbing global attention
When one looks at the historical events that masked this country particularly the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, it is inconceivable to imagine that only 20 years later, Rwandans are daring to challenge themselves with complex projects such as the digitalisation of public services - a model that has continued to evade a significant number of developing countries in spite of their relative peace for many decades.
The Minister of Youth and ICT, Jean Philbert Nsengimana, said that the country’s national ICT plan aims to further leverage the power of ICTs in important areas such as health, education, governance, finance and agriculture.
Read more: More than 2.5m Rwandans now using mobile payments
Vision 2020 that was adopted in 2000 to transform this country into a middle income economy by the year 2020 is well and truly on track.
Among the strategies was to bring fundamental change in the country's economic fortunes by gradually moving away from being an agrarian to a knowledge-based and ICT driven model.
Read more: RW: Thinking Big in ICT Has Started Bearing Fruits