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BRIEF

Central to the achievement of Rwanda's socio economic transformation, is the optimal use of land. Rwanda's land size is 26,338 km2, including water areas. The population is about 12.5 million by 2019, increasing at nearly 2.4 percent per annum. Therefore, sustaining development progress relies heavily on efficient use of land resources. This calls for a robust land use planning and management at national, sectoral, and district levels. However, the following are underlying and emerging land use challenges to be addressed going forward.

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Current Situation

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• With a current annual population growth rate of 2.4%, Rwanda's population is projected at 25 Million in 2050 and at 22M population in 2050 if the annual population growth reaches at least 2%. This increase will undoubtedly affect land use which requires proper reflection and strategic adjustments of the settlement structure.

• Urbanization is at 18.4% of the population living in urban areas while 81.6% live in scattered settlements in rural areas. This is intensified by a continuous spatial expansion which is highly land consuming and a threat to the economy of scale.

• Available hillside agriculture lands are estimated at 41.5% of the country's surface which is critical to the future food demand for 22.1 projected population by 2050.

• Infrastructure utilities and public services are pull factors for urbanization, but they are still provided to sprawling hamlets which kill the economic urbanization.

• Stormwater management issues which are mainly caused by poor settlement structures and mining practices. According to the Natural Capital Accounting, Water Account Report, Rwanda has an annual soil loss of about 64 tons per hectare, which is a very high indicator for rainwater management challenges.

• The ambitious target of National Strategy for Transformation (NST1) and Vision 2050 is to increase the urbanization rate from 17,5% in 2017 to 35% by 2024 and 70% by 2050. This target calls for prudent land use in quality consolidated human habitation .

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In light of the above issues, the Ministry of Environment in close collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning and sectors initiated the National Land Use and Development master plan for the period of 2020-2050.

 NLUDMP for 2020-2050 includes the following new policy and strategic measures:

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Urbanization

• The urbanization hierarchy has been established (with estimated urban population and required land size for each city) Kigali City as capital,

• 3 Satellite cities,

• 8 secondary cities,

• 16 districts towns and

• 73 rurban settlements (emerging centers).

• A new layer of satellite cities (Bugesera, Rwamagana, and Muhanga) has been proposed to minimize the primacy of Kigali City and support the development of growth poles (other potential towns).

• Musanze, Rubavu, Rusizi, Nyagatare, and Huye will continue to develop as secondary cities with populations between 300,000 to 650,000 people. Additional three secondary cities (Karongi, Kayonza, and Kirehe) were identified to maximize and support the periphery near international borders.

• Sixteen district towns have been identified with smaller in size, and a population ranging between 150,000 to 300,000 people.

• A layer of rurban settlements (73 nodes with 24,500 population each) has been introduced as linkage nodes between urban and rural areas. All together they will be limited to a total of 1.8M people on an area of 307 km2.

• The size of the urban sites and their corresponding population were limited to avoid urban sprawl.

• The Urban population is projected at 7.5M (35%) on a coverage area of 897 km2 by 2035 and 15.4M (70%) on the coverage area of 1470 km2 by 2050.

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Housing

An assessment of the current and future housing stock was conducted: The country has today about 2.5M housing units and needs 5.5M (150,000 dwelling units to be constructed annually) to cater for 22M by 2050. Existing informal settlements will be upgraded and densification principles will be applied for existing cities and centers before using/developing new lands. The National Land Use and Development Master Plan proposes five categories of housing to be considered by local-level planning to achieve the desired consolidation and agglomeration.

 

Rural Settlements

• The 2050 projected population of 6.6M (30%) will be clustered into 3000 settlement sites. An average of 1-2 settlement sites per one cell is required.

• The Imidugudu system will be restructured into organized clusters, and this process will need to be undertaken continuously throughout the next 30 years.

• Progressive elimination of the village as an administrative boundaries entity is recommended to remain with the Umudugudu as a social and economic entity.

• Decrease the size of rural residences from 615 m2 to 300 m2 and the dwelling models of 4x1 and 8x1 to be promoted on 300 m2.

• Avoid any new housing and utility development outside settlement boundaries.

• Educate citizens for mind-set change towards the use of land in Rwanda (emphasis on young generation)

• New development must imply agglomeration and consolidation principles.

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Agriculture

An agricultural yield model was developed. For the agriculture sector to feed the 22.1 M population by 2050, the following are the land demand scenarios:

• If the current yield situation continues, land demand will be 103,000 km² (4 times Rwanda's surface).

• If an advanced yield is adopted, Land demand will still be very high: 34,000 km² (1.3 times Rwanda's surface).

• If the best global yield is developed, 15 times of the current yield, Land demand will be 14,500 km². This scenario is the only realistic one.

• In addition, the agriculture suitability mapping has been conducted nationwide, available agricultural lands were also identified and mapped at the national scale. The revised NLUDMP recommendation is to protect agricultural lands of 12,433 km² (Agriculture: 47.2% of the country's surface) against any other use to ensure food sustainability.

• Land per farmer ratio should be around 1.5 hectares per worker

• Scattered homestead should be eliminated gradually - consolidate/agglomerate in few settlement sites. The transformation of the rural settlement system will be key to unlock the development of commercial agriculture.

 

Manufacturing, Industrial Development and Mining

• The growth rate of industrial parks will be an average of 7% annually, reaching 29 km² by 2035 and 88 km² by 2050. The pace will be slow in the first 15 years, only 6%, increasing to about 8% between 2035 and 2050 .

• Spatial distribution and optimal sizes of industrial parks were determined. Only 13 industrial parks for 2050 are needed. Every province is strategically represented. 11 cities/districts and 2 in the city of Kigali (Gasabo and Kicukiro) were identified for parks location. Other districts not included in the list of Industry parks will be allowed to plan only agro-processing mills and Agakiriro, which require small areas. The past practice of planning industrial parks in every district through local urban development master plans will be prohibited.

• The vertical construction of industrial buildings is highly encouraged to optimize the land.

• Small-scale mining exploitation will progressively transform into a regional mineral processing hub. Designation of mining sites will be done after undertaking a cost-benefit analysis of the sites, in which mining activities are proposed versus current or alternative land uses. Mineral value addition will be central to the development of the sector.

 

Transportation 

Rwanda has a very dense road network coverage, which explains the scattered nature of its human habitat. The existing road network of 37,896 km (44,669 km including paths) has been analyzed, and a new road hierarchy is proposed to achieve the desired vision 2050. NLUDMP recommends to scale up land transportation networks (to ease internal and international trade): 730 km of Expressways, 805 km of an Arterial belt, connecting all secondary cities, and 505 km of 3 railway lines, connecting Rwanda to its neighboring countries are proposed. It is important to underline that consolidation of settlements and public facilities will reduce the cost and length of roads.

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Tourism

and Conservation: Based on 2050 Vision, the tourism segments which will shape the future of the tourism industry shall include MICE, Wildlife, Cultural and historical, Medical, Educational, Water-based, Adventure and religious tourism. Given the limited available land, the principle of intensification (using small land at maximum benefit) must be adopted to achieve tourism goals.

 

• Public Utilities and Services (Water supply, energy, ICT, Education, Health and Public administration): Public services and utilities will improve when people move from where they are today to agglomerations where utilities are centralized. Distribution of utilities to sprawled settlements is strongly discouraged going forward.

 

• With a GDP growth of 8 times, 1,500 MW power will be needed by 2050

• Access to water will be scaled up to all in planned settlements by 2024.

• Water supply systems in rural areas and daily water production capacity shall be increased from 182,120 to 303,120 m3/day

• Standards land areas for health and schools have been set. Any new health and education facility to be built within urban and rural settlement boundaries and vertical construction of buildings will be mandatory.

 

Environment and Natural Resources

NLUDMP proposes the rational use of natural resources in order to optimize future land use management, which includes the following measures:

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• Ensuring that all 1,389 km² of natural forests should be preserved entirely, and economically maintained and managed.

• Ensuring that all existing 3,873 km² of forest plantations will be protected, increase the current forest densities, and professionally and financially managed.

• Ensuring that all the bare slope above 55% totaling 1,554 km² of high hills are planted with trees to become part of the forest cover. If economically maintained and managed, cash crops like tea can be developed.

• Ensuring that there are no new plantations of forest in agricultural lands, except agroforestry.

• Ensuring that all the water bodies and their buffer zones and the protected wetlands and their buffer zones totaling 4,242 Km2 are protected. The buffer zones need to be used for their role in preserving the water bodies and wetlands.

• Allowing conditional use of unprotected wetlands for commercial agriculture

• Allowing shrubland (436 km²) and wooded savannah (1040 km²) to be allocated for agriculture, except their protected parts.

• Opening of a conditional use of slopes between 30-50% for construction projects subject to proper/in depth infrastructure studies and establishing special investment requirements.

• Ensuring that all existing urban, rurban, and rural settlements are consolidated in proposed sites, decongesting all other areas for agriculture and conservation.

• Land Use Balance Sheet: The size of Rwanda is 26,338 km², including water bodies and protected wetlands. Net land cover is 23,038 km², and this is the quantity on which land uses to compete. The following is the land allocated to sectors by 2050: Agriculture: 47.2%, Built areas: 15.1%, Forest and Conservation: 29.3% and Water and protected wetlands: 8.5% of the country's surface.

 

 Implementation, compliance and monitoring

 

• Strengthening the legal and institutional framework is necessary to support effective implementation of NLUDMP. The new Land Law (awaiting Cabinet approval) must be the sole legal tool to govern the land use planning in Rwanda. All other conflicting laws and policies should be appealed. The institutional reform in land management is also needed to reinforce oversight of land use planning and management.

• Delineation and enforcement of settlement boundaries is strongly recommended. Spontaneous individual constructions should be discouraged while promoting professional real estate developers, housing cooperatives, and housing investment.

• The Ministry in charge of land should be given powers to provide a non-objection to any land use plan. This will be instrumental in resolving coordination and compliance issues.

• The national development planning and budgeting process should ensure that sector priorities and investments comply with the NLUDMP.

• The use of ICT in land use monitoring is a precedence to the successful implementation: GoR is recommended to invest in real-time monitoring using spatial data and integrated land use monitoring system.

• Improving and scaling up use of Building Permitting Management Information system (BPMIS) nationwide is critical.

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