Rwanda’s border surveyors will today receive border demarcation equipment during the launch of the African Union Border Management Programme at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kigali.

The Permanent Secretary at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Mary Baine, together with the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Rwanda, Peter Fahrenholtz, will hand over the equipment.

Germany, through its assistance to the African Union Border Programme, supports both Rwanda and Uganda in jointly delimitating and demarcating their common border, Rwandan and German officials said in a statement yesterday.

The programme has the motto: "From Barriers to Bridges”, which suggests that international borders should not be perceived as barriers but rather as bridges which enable cross-border cooperation and international trade, the officials say.

Experts from the African Union and the German International Cooperation agency (GIZ) advise and support the countries in these activities.

GIZ is also considering agreements with the two countries to support workshops, meetings, trainings, and the purchase of construction materials to promote awareness and encourage cross-border cooperation.

The equipment will allow the Rwandan surveyors to conduct delimitation and demarcation works along the Rwanda-Uganda international border.

Border works are always conducted jointly between the concerned countries, thus Rwandan surveyors will work hand-in-hand with their Ugandan counterparts.

The equipment to be distributed today includes vehicles, a large scale flatbed scanner for the scanning of maps as the basis to determine the location of the border; high accuracy differential GPS (Global Positioning System) receivers to be used in surveying activities along the Uganda-Rwanda border as well as high resolution satellite images, which will be used in creating accurate maps of the border area.