KIGALI - An American Professor of Computer Science, V.S. Subrahmanian, has commended Rwanda for making remarkable investments in Information Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure.

He said this yesterday while presenting a paper on monitoring investment in ICT in Rwanda, at a forum that attracted various stakeholders involved in the implementation of critical government programmes.

"Rwanda is a very promising country in the region in terms of ICT investment, and some major ICT companies are looking at Rwanda for potential investments in ICT,” he said.

Subrahmanian, who is also the Director of the Centre for Digital International Government at the University of Maryland in the US, told the participants that monitoring investment in ICT helps to understand the impact of the technology on investment in educational, social, and economic lives of the people.

‘It also enables governments to understand how these ICT investments help to improve the lives of the people so that it can focus on those investments more effectively,” he added.

Subrahmanian stated that Rwanda is a stable country with good governance systems and that, in the next five years, he hopes the country will start to reap big.

Speaking at the meeting, Ignace Gatare, the Minister in the President’s Office in charge of ICT, said monitoring investment in ICT was a valuable tool for decision-making and efficient resource allocation.

He noted that ongoing programmes of deploying access to broadband infrastructures, countrywide, will open new business opportunities and facilitate access to fast and efficient services in education, health, agriculture and socio-economic sectors.

"We, therefore, need a sound understanding of how ICT programmes can fast track the implementation of other national priority programmes as well as optimise their expected outcome,” Gatare noted.

He thanked Subrahmanian for availing his expertise towards supporting Rwanda in designing a robust monitoring and evaluation system which assists in implementing investments in ICT.

Gatare underscored that monitoring investment in ICT will help in implementing the National ICT Plan (NICI 3) 2011-2105 which focuses on service development.

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