The Rwandan ministry of ICT and Innovation will allocate part of its next year’s budget to new projects focusing on technologies such as blockchain, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI) and big data initiatives, an official source confirmed Monday in Kigali.
According to the Rwandan minister of ICT and Innovation, Paula Ingabire, the planned investment is part of national “Policy and strategy of emerging technologies”, developed by the government of Rwanda to make new technologies of the fourth industrial revolution an engine of national socioeconomic growth.
The senior Rwandan Government official said that “blockchain, like all the list of technologies of the fourth industrial revolution, is one of the areas that we strongly support as a government.”
Rwandan officials emphasize that the blockchain will also transform in the near future many important sectors, including healthcare, tourism, land registration, agriculture, value transfer, supply chain, art and fashion. , transport and logistics, finance, and will contribute to better public management.
Rwandan Government is currently embracing the blockchain to make it a tool for good governance, it said.
Among other initiatives undertaken it includes a project to monitor tantalum from the pit to the refinery that was initiated since last year.
The National Bank of Rwanda and the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA) have also established a Sandbox – an IT security mechanism – around the blockchain to test the new technology in public services delivery, it said.
Africa Blockchain Institute (ABI) has announced it will begin operations in Rwanda in 2020, making it the first blockchain school in the country.
Currently operating in Ghana, the school intends to offer five courses namely; blockchain essentials certification course, blockchain developers’ course, enterprise blockchain course, blockchain for lawyers and blockchain for impact.
CU/abj/APA