The Conservative Party has undertaken a social action project in Rwanda, called Project Umubano, each year since 2007. Rwanda was chosen because it represents the worst and the best of Africa – the worst through the genocide that took place in 1994 and the best as the country came together to rebuild in its aftermath. I joined in 2008 and 2009 when I returned from Rwanda with my own project to collect unwanted soccer shirts and I was keen to take part this year. I joined a team assisting the Rwandan authorities with the provision of advice on planning, land use & affordable housing.
Our team of experts included three professional architects and planners from the Academy of Urbanism, a politician in myself, a technician and a student and were charged with the task of considering new development in the capital city Kigali and the provision of new housing. Kigali, only a village until the early sixties, now straddles seven hills and is extending over many more. Currently with a population 1.2 million, growth estimates for 2035 have just been upgraded from 3, to 5, million people. First impressions are of any capital city with city centre skyscrapers and wide clean tarmac dual carriageway boulevards with brick paved sidewalk exotic trees. Near the centre these boulevards are lined with an assortment of large hotels, office blocks and apartments displaying every imaginable architectural style.
On the suburbs we saw spacious villas and new industrial estates with 2 storey, brick built housing estates with smart landscaped courtyards and streets and by contrast unplanned areas or shanty towns clinging to the hillside. These unplanned areas form not just homes for nearly half the urban population but in many cases are their businesses also. Whilst wending our way up or down the steep, haphazard, mud alleys we saw many sewing machines and small practical workshops for repairing assorted items. Ideally the Rwanda authorities would clear these 'slums' but the pressure upon growth - to have 30,000 people a year means that, for now at least, they have to help people improve their living conditions where they are, whilst building new housing for the new population.
At a meeting with the Permanent Secretary for Housing and Local Government we heard how the country has been re-organised administratively, and their vision for the future. We learnt how Rwanda intends to begin creating 4 new cities, one based in each district. The Kigali masterplan was completed in 2008 and the others have recently, or are shortly about to be, completed.
In the rural area we saw the development of new villages designed to encourage families to move from the land, enabling bigger and more efficient agricultural units. Built by the villagers themselves, laying their own foundations of stone and making their own bricks of compressed earth and sand, each had a 3 roomed house, in its own plot, with an outhouse for washing and showering, an earth closet and a kitchen cooking on biogas. Each villager was given a cow. These are kept collectively and the waste used to create the biogas - the residue becoming odourless compost to place on their vegetable gardens or fields.
In the Planning Department, part of the Mayor's Office we visited a One Stop Centre, where potential investors, and other applicants, can apply for planning permission, building control and supply of all utilities on one form and, as part of its client service, approve, or refuse, within one month! The Kigali team of planners, engineers and urban designers, were supported by a consultancy from Singapore and an Italian architect – equipping it much better than the provincial city.
Responsibility for affordable housing rests with the Director General of the Rwandan Housing Authority. We talked about their approach to what they called "affordable" housing but this turned out to be engaging financial institutions in providing mortgages and developers in building housing estates for the middle class. As currently most houses are built on individually purchased plots this is necessary progress, but 'the elephant in the room' is the need for 'more affordable' and social housing to extend the market further into the 70% of the population not yet catered for. The assumption was that all these would be accommodated in apartments of various size, height and density yet without any idea of how this could be funded. This, we thought, was the problem that needed addressing.
The essence of our presentation addressed the need for even more affordable development, better suited to the African culture than just apartment blocks. We proposed patio, or terraced houses each with their own front porch, backyard for vegetables and chickens, and serviced outhouses which could be self built by a co-operative. Initially single storey, these could be extended upwards as the owners prospered, used as workshops for fledgling businesses, and even ultimately garage a car if required.
We also advised how the character of these developments could differ from neighbourhood to neighbourhood to create a varied identity based upon African culture celebrating topography with landmarks in the same way as campaniles do in Italy, or church spires in England, but to be of a unique character selected by the community to symbolise the completion of their development. We added to this by advising on how the Rwandan Housing Authority might reuse funds from the rising value of real estate, initially from the wealthy, but later from the middle class and new, upwardly successful entrepreneurs, to be used to invest in more housing provision for low income groups.
Finally we illustrated ways in which such development could occur on slopes steeper than 20° so that more of the working population of all levels, office workers, cleaners, security staff etc; could live close to the town centre
It wasn’t all work! With a group of rather younger volunteers than myself, we played a game of touch Rugby with the Rwandan Rugby team in Kigali’s national stadium. The Rwandans are great exponents of the seven a side game ,and we were left often clutching at shadows as they dummied and shimmied their way past us. However, as with any group of Rugby players getting together, the after match beers soon enabled us to put the result behind us. In addition I had the opportunity to visit the Rwandan Parliament which is modelled on our own and the site of fighting in the immediate aftermath of the genocide, with the damage preserved as is the case at Westminster. A difference is that each deputy (MP) has their own allocated seat for their exclusive use.
Our last action before flying back home was to visit the memorial in the centre of Kigali, where more than 250,000 victims have been buried where laid a wreath and reflected on the huge changes Rwanda has and is going through.