Firm to establish National Data Centre

GASABO - The Rwanda Development Board/Information and Communication Technology, Tuesday signed a deal worth US $5.2m with a Swedish ICT firm, Coromatic, to establish a National Data Centre (NDC) where all national data will be stored.

The ceremony which was attended by the Minister in the President’s Office in charge of Science and ICT, Prof. Romain Murenzi, took place at Telecom House with the RDB/IT Deputy CEO Nkubito Bakuramutsa signing on behalf of the board and Maths Waxin, the CEO of Coromatic signing on behalf of the Swedish firm.

"This is a very special moment for IT in this country and the whole region, this is going to be one of the best and safest data centres in Africa and the world,” said Bakuramutsa in reference to the national data centre which is set to become the first of its kind in the region and on the continent.

The signing follows months of negotiations between the Government body charged with promoting ICT in and the Swedish firm to construct a data centre where all government ministries, institutions and the private sector will have their important data stored.

Minister Murenzi said that the data centre is one of the two major orientations the government has put in place to transform the ICT Sector in the country to enable knowledge creation, transfer and sharing under the National Information and Communication Infrastructure (NICI).

NICI is the national roadmap for ICT-led Socio-Economic Development spanning the 20 years required to realise the Vision 2020 and the National Data Centre is part of the NICI Plan 2005 that aims at building a robust and a modern infrastructure to accommodate a centralized system that would enhance the overall functioning of government entities and the Private Sector.

"This initiative is one of the many programmes the government has put in place as Rwanda positions itself as the region’s ICT hub. We are going to be the first country in the region to have this type of data centre and we are also working around the clock to increase the bandwidth to address connectivity problems,” said Murenzi.

He further noted that a project partly financed by proceeds from the privatisation of Rwandatel, the government and donors to establish a nationwide optic fibre linking the whole country at a cost of over $70m, is underway.

The World Bank has provided an additional $24m to facilitate the country’s plans to connect to the SEACOM undersea cable.

Murenzi revealed that negotiations with SEACOM have come to a conclusion and an agreement will be signed in June 2009 and the whole country will be connected to the Optic fibre by December.

According to the CEO of Coromatic, the firm which has set up over 1,000 national databases in different countries on the globe, the National Data Centre will be a ‘High Density Centre’ (Tier 3 by International Standards) with the ‘newest’ and ‘safest’ technology.

Installation work begins in September and the centre that is expected to hold millions of data from the public and private sectors in the ‘safest’ way, will be handed over to the government in December and a contractor to manage the centre will be hired.

Bakuramutsa added that the whole programme to rollout and link the public and private sector countrywide to the centre, which will support and enable access to common applications such as SmartGov, Messaging & Collaboration, Unified Communication, travel approval systems, Human resource, payroll and many more will cost around $10m.

He added that the highly secure centre, whose chances of destruction will be very minimal, will connect and allow secure access to information from government offices, health, education sectors as well as the socio-economic data of the country.

He revealed that neighbouring countries could also consider backing up their data on the Rwandan system while a commercial area will be provided for companies and NGO’s that would wish to back up their info.

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