The Rwandan government is to set up an ICT park in the Kigali Special Economic Zone (KSEZ), as the country trials the idea of a fully-fledged ICT city in the future.
The park, the launch of which is being handled through the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), will host technological training, industries, research and development.
Patrick Nyirishema, the Head of ICT at RDB, told The New Times that the Kigali Techno Pole would serve as an experiment to see if a larger tech city was feasible in Rwanda.
“Rather than starting with a big technological park, we thought of looking for a place where we can build a techno pole on a small scale which would give us an idea of how an ICT city would be,” he said. “Today most of the components that would make a techno pole are in an ICT park.”
Carnegie Mellon University, which opened a campus in Rwanda last year, will be relocated to the ICT park by 2015. The US$13 million campus is funded by the African Development Bank (AfDB), with construction works to begin by the end of the year.
The KLab innovation hub will also relocated to the ICT park.
Other private investments will fund other construction projects, according to Nyirishema, with the park primarily intended for new investments rather than established companies.
“We shall start slowly by slowly and the techno pole will progress with time. All the physical works are in place like roads, fibre optic cable network, and the remaining facilities will be developed progressively,” he said.
