Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)
4 July 2008
Kigali — Rwanda intends to reduce dependence on Kenya and Tanzania for business routes by building a rail line through DR Congo and Zambia to make the landlocked country economically independent, President Paul Kagame has said.
Rwanda has to use the Kenyan port of Mombasa for its imports and exports, a risk that was highlighted during the political violence in Kenya in January and February.
"We were thinking about this many years before these problems in Kenya," Mr. Kagame told Bloomberg Television in an interview on Tuesday in Egypt where he was taking in the African Union summit. "It's always logical not to depend on one option. The more options you have to do anything the better."
In addition to the rail link to the Tanzanian port city of Dar es Salaam, the government is considering a southern railroad through Tanzania to Zambia. Should the political situation in the DR Congo stabilize, Rwanda may also help build a railroad west through Congo's vast jungles to the Atlantic, Mr. Kagame revealed.
Following the post election violence in Kenya, Rwanda immediately signed agreements with Tanzania as the route for its fuel products.
Mr. Kagame told the American business channel that the economy can maintain 7 percent growth for the next two to three years, even with higher food and fuel prices.
"I think we can continue with large growth, or even higher growth, especially if we can solve the problem of energy, which we are also doing," he said. Efforts to extract methane gas from beneath Lake Kivu could help the country reduce its dependence on imported oil, Mr. Kagame said.
Oil Pipeline
The government also wants Rwanda connected to a new oil pipeline that will link Mombasa with Eldoret in western Kenya. The pipeline will be extended to the Ugandan capital, Kampala, and may go on to the Rwandan capital, Kigali, Kagame said.
The feasibility study for the Kampala-Kigali pipeline, done by US-based Science Application International Corporation (SAIC Energy) estimates construction costs at about 193.6 million dollars (about Rwf 106 Billion).
Another $53 million is required to move the much needed pipeline to Burundi. Rwanda for its part wants its section operational in three years.
Tamoil East Africa, a Libyan company, won the tender to install the 8-inch diameter, 320km pipeline from Eldoret to Kampala, with an annual capacity of about 1.2m cubic metres. The firm has started acquiring land and compensating land-owners on the pipeline route.
Unlike some of its neighbors, Rwanda hasn't had any food shortages as a result of higher global prices.
"Our farmers should be able to get quite a bit of money from what they produce," President Kagame said. "On the one hand it's a globally big problem. On the other hand it's an opportunity for people who have good food policies and invested well in this area."
Rwanda's efforts to install fiber-optic lines in the country should lead to Uganda becoming "a hub of sorts in terms of IT or financial services," he told Bloomberg.
French Apology
Meanwhile after tipping of possible indictments of senior French officials for Genocide, President Kagame also called for an apology from France.
A French apology could help improve relations between the two countries, he said.
"I think that the French need to come clean on their involvement in the genocide in Rwanda," Kagame said. "France like others needs to respect other people. In Africa, in Rwanda, we are not there just because they wish us to be. We are there because we have the right to be there." (End)
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