The spaces along Kigali’s roads continue diminishing while settlements feel the pressure

BY GEORGE KAGAME

Every morning Jean Pierre Hakizimana (not his real name) comes to the Total petrol station at the junction between the roads leading to Gikondo and Kacyiru. Hakizimana is not employed at the petrol station neither is he a traffic policemen controlling the growing vehicle congestion at the junction.

He used to own the plot of land on which Total petrol station stands brightly, open 24 hours a day. Hakizimana sold his plot to an investor who built the modern petrol station, how or where Hakizimana spent the cash he was paid his plot are not clear enough because it is hard enough having a conversation with him, what is clear though is that he now suffering from mental problems and every morning Hakizimana comes to the petrol station and spends his entire day there making antics of admiration of the station.

Hakizimana is among of many petty land lords that have been displaced by investors, yesterday’s bushes are today’s mansions as Kigali continues its modernization drive. No where is this modernization more visible that the long drive from Nyabugogo to Kanombe airport!

The drive from Nyabugogo Taxi Park to Kanombe airport is like entering Rwanda’s Vision 2020, more than that, feeling the pulse of the residents of this long stretch of beautiful buildings on both sides of the road and the evergreen lush gardens.
During evening hours, the pavements and the roads are equally busy, vehicles speeding workers to or from work on the road while Kigali residents burn some fat jogging away their sweat on the pavements.

Many of architectural mazes on this road are newly built, while some like the new American embassy are still on their fist painting coat.
This beautiful drive will even need more superlatives to describe it once construction works begin this year for the highly anticipated Kigali Convention centre opens for business sometime.
And yet the convention centre will compete for importance with the equally impressive Dubai World funded golf course hotel which has taken about 100 hectares and displaced many more people in Kacyiru.

The land on which these two structures will be erected and on which many other modern buildings sit were until recently a bunch of dilapidated housing shacks that scrupulous city land owners used to exploit urban peasants in Kigali, the end of such landlords has been Kigali city’s increasing commercial depth, which even with the soon to be launched Kigali Master plan have made land extremely expensive and changed the view of the surrounding area which until recently were empty fields overgrown with bushes and trees.

Bruno Rangira the director of communication with Kigali City council says; “Kigali city council is taking a new direction as far as the resettlement of those moved from areas that are planned to be developed. We started with a pilot project of 1000 low cost houses that are being built in Batsinda-Gasabo district. Presently the first phase of over 250 houses was completed. Now about the first 50 families from lower Kiyovu are moving in these houses.”

The new Kigali master plan that will soon presented to parliament states;
“Most slums are located along the main roads where planned high income residential, commercial and administrative land use activities can highly thrive. An example of such a location is in Kiyovu-Muhima, where you will find a planned road network, but a precarious settlement.”

The petty land lords that used own these bushes were paid off and many went back to rural areas, others invested in other businesses while the rest just moved to inner slum areas. Hakizimana is among such peasant land lords currently crowded in many urban slums and ironically renting the same quality of shacks they used to own.

Steven Mbanda who used to own several plots of land in Remera and now runs a shop in the same area says; “many have just moved to inner city settlements like Kabagari in Kacyiru and Biryogo in Nyamirambo.”

I visited one such land lord who proffered not to be named, he is very bitter with the government and like Mbanda he reminisces about the way he spent his money; “I don’t like this government and any one that works or for it,” the anonymous ex land lord says. But Mbanda says such land lords are in fact bitter with themselves with the way they spent their new found cash.

Matayo Nduwumwami 48, a small landlord five years ago before the an investor bought him off, shares this opinion. Although he was given compensation, it was not enough fo rhim to build another home outside the city. The Kigali municipal authorities have tried to resolve the problem by providing alternative housing for them in Batsinda estate.

The lucky ones have been resettled in the PIGU (Projet d'Infrastructure et de Gestion Urbaine), in this project government has since 2003 created housing schemes to reduce chronic housing shortage in the country.

Some of the inhabitants of this estate will be ones that were driven from Kigali to make way for the new Kigali
Their lands are now history, large modern buildings are in place, and these are owned by even larger corporations or private bungalows for international executives doing their time in Kigali.

“So this is a new policy of Kigali city of facilitating those people moved to get better houses and even decent livelihoods. This is different from the past where after they were given their compensation money they would be left to fend for themselves, which eventually led to the growth of slums.
Other districts- Kicukiro and Nyarugenge are have plans to also build these low cost houses to settle the populations that are move,” Rangira says.

Some of the unlucky ones have genuine concerns like Matayo; "there is no sanitation or other infrastructure for development that they promised us, like hospitals, schools, electricity, or water supplies. The misery related to joblessness is too frequent and the authorities have not helped us find a solution," Matayo said.

The new Kigali is not that modern glitter that the master plan envisions or anything close to Vision 2020 but the city has rather taken its own unique way to adopt to its new found beauty a cold night drive from Kanombe to Mumuji as well as its nasty warmer concentration camps behind the ministry of education offices...the famous Kabagari.