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Resources and infrastructure: Transport, communications and the Internet(Country Profile Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Transport Nearly all of Rwanda's imports and exports travel over 1,500 km by road through Uganda to or from the port of Mombasa in Kenya, or by road and rail to and from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, generating high transport costs for traders. Rwanda has no railways, and in the long term, if the funds ever became available, the government wishes to establish a rail link from Kigali to Isaka in Tanzania, where a rail service runs to Dar es Salaam. Rwanda's arterial roads already compare well with those in neighbouring countries, especially as they are being increasingly well maintained, as part of infrastructural spending under the IMF-World Bank poverty reduction strategy paper. There are about 1,100 km of tarred roads, and another 12,000 km of unpaved main and secondary roads, which are vulnerable to rain damage. The average distance from most households to a trunk road is 4 km, and the furthest that anyone lives from a trunk road is 20km. Commercial transport is in private hands, and so to a large extent is public transport, although there is also a state bus company, Onatracom, which is the only service running vehicles larger than a minibus in the country. Air services Rwandair Express runs internal air services and also connects Kigali to Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi and, via a partnership arrangement with South African Airways, Johannesburg. The airline is scheduled for privatis-ation, although it is unclear when this will take place. Kenya Airways connects Kigali and Nairobi, and Nairobi is Rwanda's closest and usually most con-venient international hub. An alternative option is Ethiopian Airlines, which connects Rwanda to the world via Addis Ababa. Direct services to Europe are provided exclusively by Brussels Airlines between Kigali and Brussels. Telecommunications There are a little over 100,000 fixed telephone lines in operation, four times higher than two years ago, most of them in Kigali. In 2005 99% of the state-owned telecommunications company, Rwandatel, was sold to Jersey-based Terracom Communications for US$20m, although the name Rwandatel is still commonly in use. In 2006 Terracom began rolling out a wireless landline replacement service for people in areas with no cabling, named EasyCall, and also launched its mobile-phone service, the country's long-awaited second network. Terracom's mobile-phone service has been aggressively marketed, with cheap handsets and lower rates than the former monopoly holder, MTN Rwandacell. The new service does not yet, however, offer a short messaging service (SMS), which is extremely popular with local mobile-phone users. MTN-Rwandacell, which is 40% owned by MTN (South Africa) and 50% by Telstar, a locally based investment company (10% is held in trust, to help to kick-start a possible local stock exchange), has around 300,000 subscribers, up from 20,000 in 2000, and operates throughout most of the country as well as (though under a different name) in parts of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. User charges are high and have not so far come down in response to Terracom's entrance into the market. All telecommunications issues, including telephone charges and interconnectivity agreements between MTN-Rwandacell and Terracom, are meant to be regulated by the Rwanda Utility Regulatory Agency (RURA). RURA is struggling to respond, and appears to lack the necessary capacity to deal adequately with the formidable regulatory challenges that it faces. Internet There are six Internet service providers (up from just one in 2000) but Internet usage is expensive and the number of regular Internet users is lowdespite the government's aspiration for the country to become a "knowledge economy"estimated at around 35,000, or 0.4% of the population. In 2007 Terracom extended asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) broadband connectivity from Kigali to Butare, Gitarama and Ruhengeri, on the back of a recently installed fibre-optic cable. Internet connections are generally stable, although there are concerns about privacy. Many suspect government surveillance of Internet use and are consequently cautious what they write in e-mails. Mass media The 2002 census found that, although less than 1% of the population owned a computer and under 10% of the population had a phone, 60% of urban and 40% of rural dwellers had a radio, demonstrating that radio remains, as it has been for decades, the main medium of national mass communication. The biggest and best-resourced radio station, Radio Rwanda, is state-owned, considered dull by much of the radio-owning population and never broadcasts items critical of the government. Radio Rwanda is vital listening to Rwandans nonetheless, since it is the main and often the only means by which public announcements are made. Radio Rwanda had a broadcasting monopoly between 1994 and 2004, when the government began granting private radio station licences. By mid-2007 there were ten private radio stations, four commercial, four religious and two community. Thus far, private radio stations have avoided politics (although some took up the controversial issue of the banning of motorbikes in Kigali in 2006), with commercial radio stations generally youth- and contemporary music-focused. Following a break in diplomatic relations with France in late 2006, Radio France Internationale journalists and broadcasts were banned. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which has a Kinyarwanda service, is available on FM and is widely listened to. The printed press, largely confined to Kigali, is hampered by high production costs, low sales andwith the exception of the pro-government, semi-official New Timesrepeated harassment from the authorities. Independent news-papers such as Umuseso, Umuco, and Umuvugizi are particularly targeted, and their journalists have frequently been arrested and detained. In 2006 the gov-ernment presented draft press legislation limiting criminal liability to journalists and media owners and eliminating it for printers and retailers. The legislation, however, retained libel as a criminal offence, and a separate bill, meanwhile, granted the High Council of the Press (HCP) more powers to regulate and punish the private media. The HCP has already shown considerable eagerness to punish newspapers critical of the government, and independent newspapers are worried about what the impact of the new HCP powers might be. SOURCE: Country Profile Copyright 2007 Economist Intelligence Unit |