Short-medium term priorities (2020 – 2030)

In the next 5 – 10 years Rwanda will design and implement the necessary interventions to support the maintenance and enhancement of its natural capital. This will support rural livelihoods, larger resourcebased sectors, as well as the security and productivity of strategic natural resources such as water and land resources. Importantly, the short-term focus on natural and water resources management should also facilitate the transition from extractive processes and the export of raw materials to resource preservation through value adding product development and green efficiency. Initially the focus of land and natural resource management must be on vulnerable and climate impact prone areas and populations to build the adaptive capacity of rural economic activities and communities.

Long term ambitions (2030 – 2050) 

Rwanda will seek to establish itself as a green knowledge-based economy which has become decoupled from natural resources. This shift should be accompanied by extensive land, water and natural resource management programmes that improve the resilience of Rwanda’s economy to shocks to the natural capital base. These include progressive approaches to ensuring enhanced biodiversity, the prioritisation of water towers, reforesting of degraded lands, creation vegetation buffer zones along riverbanks and grass buffer strips in farmlands, and upstream watershed protection measures. Water storage and multi-functional infrastructure should be a key focus especially noting that it will underpin irrigation, sustainable urbanization while also reducing risk of flood disaster.

Financing and unlocking implementation 

Effective partnerships will need to be built to disseminate and align stakeholders from communities through to government and private sector in order to achieve multi-level integrated implementation of sustainable land and water resources management. Financing needs to 2030 are considerable (US$ 1,920 million) if the country seeks to implement measures at national scale, leaving no one behind. However, the avoided costs of destructive climate impacts and climate vulnerability, alongside the economic benefits of agricultural productivity gains, job creation, and livelihood security will justify the outlay to build a resilient economy.

Short-medium term priorities (2020 – 2030) 

In the next 5 - 10 years a strong focus must be placed on operationalising an integrated GIS data and information system to create a unified framework of spatial planning, land administration, and vulnerability mapping tools. The National Spatial Data Infrastructure must be put in place to support the development of sophisticated ICT and GIS capabilities that will enable Rwanda to advance land use planning and management, in an integrated manner that allows for information-sharing and enables a more complete spatial understanding of land use change and its impacts. 

Long term ambitions (2030 – 2050) 

In the long term, Rwanda’s ICT Sector will be a cornerstone of Economic transformation, Social transformation, and transformational Governance as it operates as the “Leading ICT Hub in Africa.” This will have a fundamental impact on land and natural resource management as Rwanda transitions to decouple its economic growth from reliance on resource-based and extractive industries. Reliable, real-time, responsive ICT infrastructure and systems will be a strong base for inclusive planning and resilience building to enable interventions and management programmes to reach vulnerable populations and areas, and assist with the distribution of livelihood building inputs, disaster response, and natural resource management. 

Financing and unlocking implementation 

The government of Rwanda will need to overcome delays and lack of implementation of sustainable land use management and spatial planning infrastructure and systems such as the NSDI and its inter-operability with other systems. This could be done by capitalising on the momentum around building the resilience of the economy and the adaptive capacity of Rwandan people and businesses. The bulk of this Programme of Action would be financed by public budget ($ 295 million by 2050) with inputs from the private sector to support access to cutting edge technology, skills transfer and data sharing.