01
Apr

According to statistics, the number of households accessing electricity has increased from 10% in 2010 to 51% as of February, 2019. Kicukiro and Nyarugenge Districts have currently the highest rate with 82% and 75% respectively while Gakenke has the lowest rate with 33%. The total number of households connected across the country is 1,381,405 today.

The Government of Rwanda has taken a policy decision to diversify the sources of electricity by adding to traditional dominant grid connections some mini-grid and off-grid connections. Subsequently, Households located far away from the planned national grid coverage are being encouraged to use alternatively cheaper connections such as Mini-grids and Solar Photovoltaics (PVs) to reduce the cost of access to electricity whilst relieving constraints on historical government subsidies.

Among the 51% households accessing electricity, 37% are connected to the national grid while 14% are accessing through off-grid solution, mainly solar energy and mini-grids.

The current access targets stipulate a 100% access to electricity by the year 2024 while productive users will be all connected before the end of the year 2021. To achieve this target, REG intends to increase the number of new connections by 500,000 every year, including 200,000 on-grid and 300,000 off-grid.