ICT infrastructure
Overview
Rwanda has the ambition to become a regional hub for top-tier capacity building in ICT, and to accelerate this, the Government has invested in developing ICT infrastructure to enable service delivery.
Rwanda’s ICT competitive advantage
- 4500Km+ of Fibre-optic broadband cabling has been laid throughout the country connecting all 30 districts and with nine regional links to neighboring countries;
- 10 Gbps of broadband capacity
- 6% of population Connected the 4GLTE network
- Increased mobile penetration to 76.2%, with over 8.5 million subscribers.
- 1% of internet penetration across the country.
There are opportunities to establish more data centers and business continuity centers
Investment Opportunities in the ICT sector
- Infrastructure management services
- Software development
- Cloud computing
- Business process outsourcing
- Mobile applications
- E-government
- ICT education and training
- ICT business financing
- Application development & integration
- IT consulting
- Software R&D
Special incentive packages provided to ICT firms, including:
- VAT exemption from IT equipment: Visit the link below to see the exempted items: https://www.rra.gov.rw/fileadmin/user_upload/liste_of_ict_equipment_exempted_from vat.pdf
- Corporate income tax rate of (15%): A corporate income tax rate of (15%) shall be accorded to a registered investor in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Sector with an investment involving one of the following activities: Services, manufacturing or assembly. This incentive excludes ICT retail and wholesale trade as well as ICT repair industries and telecommunications.
- Corporate income tax holiday of up to seven (7) years: A registered investor, investing an equivalent of at least fifty million United States Dollars and contributing at least (30%) of this investment in the form of equity in the ICT sector with a venture involving manufacturing, assembly, and service. This incentive excludes communication, ICT retail, and wholesale trade as well as ICT repair companies or enterprises and telecommunications.
- Immigration incentives; 1° A registered investor and his/her dependents shall be issued with a residence permit in accordance with relevant laws.
2° A registered investor who invests an equivalent of at least two hundred fifty-thousand United States Dollars (USD 250,000) may recruit three (3), foreign employees, without necessarily demonstrating that their skills are lacking or insufficient on the labor market in Rwanda.
