Rwanda is ranked Top Sub Saharan African country with most affordable internet for the second time successively according to Alliance for Affordable Internet’s (A4AI’s) 2015-16 Affordability Report released on 22 February 2016.

The report examines the state of broadband affordability across 51 developing and emerging economies, with a focus on how policy and regulation are working to reduce prices and enable wider access.

Rwanda stands at 3^rd place in Africa following Morocco and Mauritius, and comes at 11^th place globally with overall score of 53,13%.

The report reads in part that “Rwanda is the highest ranked least developed country in this year’s Affordability Drivers Index. Its success is due, in part, to the ambitious policies the country is pursuing. The SMART Rwanda Master Plan 2015-2020, builds on the previous National Information and Communication Infrastructure (NICI) plans, and puts ICTs — especially broadband — at the heart of the national socio-economic development agenda. The plan highlights public-private partnerships as a vehicle for achieving these goals, and lays out proposals for improved programme implementation and monitoring and evaluation”.

“Recent market developments in Rwanda look promising. In November 2014, Olleh Rwanda Networks (a joint venture between the government and Korea Telecom Corporation) launched an open access 4G LTE network; using this network, Airtel Rwanda was able to start offering 4G LTE services to customers that same month” the report further reads.

Commenting on the report, Honorable Jean Philbert Nsengimana, Minister for Youth and ICT said that the government of Rwanda has invested heavily in ICT infrastructure. Already, a national high-speed fibre-optic backbone has been deployed in all 30 districts and connects eleven border posts as well. 4G LTE internet covers 14 districts with aim of covering 95% of population by 2017. 4G LTE internet is also accessible for free in over 480 buses in Kigali City. It further installed WI-FI access in all private and public universities and college campuses to provide access to Internet.  

“33,5% of Rwandans are subscribed to internet as of December 2015. We want to increase the number of internet subscribers and the more subscribers increase in number, the more the cost of internet will decrease,” Minister Nsengimana added.

The Alliance for Affordable Internet is an initiative to make the Internet more affordable to people around the world. The World WIde Web Foundation serves as the Secretariat, and major members of coalition include Google, the Omidyar Network, the Department for International Development, United States Agency for International development, Facebook, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, UN Women and many others from the public, private and civil society sectors.