The city of Kigali, often named "cleanest city in Africa" by the United Nations, has a new mayor. The new mayor is Samuel Dusengiyumva, who previously worked for the Rwandan Ministry of Local Government.
After four years at the head of the municipality of Kigali, Pudence Rubingisa was appointed Governor of the Eastern Province by Paul Kagame’s administration. He will be replaced from 2024 by Samuel Dusengiyumva. Following a vote, the senior civil servant received 532 votes authorising him to govern the green city with a population of just over 1.8 million.
This new five-year term will be faced with a number of challenges, including accelerating the ecological transition in Kigali, which is also the 2022 winner of the urban innovation prize organised by Bloomberg Philanthropies. The city of a thousand hills owes this award to the introduction of an intelligent waste management system that “improves sanitation and water quality in informal settlements”, according to the teams from United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG).
In Kigali, sport and cycling are king, green spaces stretch as far as the eye can see and are well maintained on a daily basis to attract ever more African and Western visitors, as in December 2022 when it hosted the World Circular Economy Forum (WCEF) and the World Travel and Tourism Summit in November 2023. It is this image that the 40-year-old Samuel Dusengiyumva and his team will have to work hard to maintain and, if possible, strengthen.
Kigali, a green and intelligent Eldorado
The first test will obviously be the implementation of the Green City Kigali project, which is currently in its pilot phase, in partnership with the Rwanda Green Fund (Fonerwa). At a total cost of $5 billion, co-financed by the German Development Agency (KfW), the initiative aims to build 1.7 million homes using local materials and powered by solar energy in the suburb of Kinyinya Hill.
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The work, covering an area of 620 hectares, should also enable the installation of a wastewater and rainwater collection system, as well as the roll-out of fibre optics for the development of local economic activities. It’s a huge undertaking for the new mayor of Kigali, who did all his training at the National University of Rwanda (UNR).
Benoit-Ivan Wansi
