The newly appointed Minister in charge of ICT in the President’s Office, Dr Ignace Gahangara Gatare, has said that he will add his efforts to ongoing initiatives aimed at making ICT accessible to the country’s rural communities.

"We will encourage all efforts and initiatives aiming at narrowing the digital divide or gap in such a way that ICT becomes a reality for urban as well as rural communities,” Gatare, said in an interview with The New Times yesterday.

President Paul Kagame on Saturday appointed the PhD graduate and Doctor in Engineering Sciences to the portfolio, replacing Prof Romain Murenzi who was granted a sabbatical leave last July.

Gatare said he would use his vast experience to contribute to the ICT sector by consolidating the infrastructure deployment plan the country has put in place.

"First of all we have to learn from the efforts that have been undertaken, especially under the National Information and Communication Infrastructure (NICI) policy and Plan,” he added.

Describing his appointment as a unique opportunity to contribute to ICT development in Rwanda, the new minister said he will work closely in consultation with all public and private stakeholders, to ensure that ICT becomes an empowering tool for the achievement of the country’s development vision.

Gatare said  one of the challenges will be raising the necessary critical mass in terms of skills and resources needed for the implementation of the NICI policy and plan, which he said constitutes an important step in terms of goal-setting in order to transform Rwanda into a regional ICT hub.

According to his resumé, his PhD research work concerned experimental and theoretical investigations of polarization switching, nonlinear dynamics, optical injection-locking and chaos synchronization in vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs).

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