Paula Ingabire, minister of Information and communications technology and Innovation, Rwanda.

Rwanda plans to have all households connected to the internet by 2029.

This is one of the primary goals of the government's second national transformation strategy (NST2 2024-2029), which aims to achieve the Vision 2050 blueprint of sustainable economic growth, prosperity, and a high standard of living for all citizens.

NST2 was introduced in late 2024, and late Monday (yesterday), Paula Ingabire, minister of information and communications technology and innovation, published a roadmap for the strategy, disclosing several previously unknown priorities.

She said: “Infrastructure deployment remains a priority. We want to get to a point where, when it comes to last mile connectivity, every home in Rwanda at least is well connected and they are able to benefit from the digital economy.”

Ingabire noted that other priorities of the NST2 were addressing cyber security, nurturing talent and leveraging technology to address challenges of urbanisation.

“Cyber security is going to be critical. We have to invest fully in upgrading, extending the capabilities that we have as a country when it comes to safeguarding both our infrastructure and information assets.”

Ingabire said the new strategy broadened its horizons on the smart cities concept.

“We are moving away from simply looking at smart cities but calling it smart cities and communities so that we look at all these technologies, green technologies we can deploy to ensure that we are addressing the urbanisation challenges that almost every country is dealing with.”

She added: “Talent will remain a priority for us, more from the perspective of making sure Rwanda remains a proof-of-concept country where all these emerging technologies are tested, tried and then scaled to different parts of the continent and beyond Africa.”