Rwanda Energy Group has won this year’s East Africa’s most Impactful Energy Development Cooperation of the year award which is organized by African Leadership Magazine.

The award was given to Rwanda’s ambassador to United Kingdom Yamina Karitanyi during the Africa Energy Awards that were held in on 24th June 2016 at the le Meridian Piccadilly London in United Kingdom.

On the same event Rwanda Energy Group was also applauded for their distinguished honoree for this award category. They were also nominated for the African Leadership Medal of Honour which qualifies them to be inducted into the African leadership hall of fame.

Rwanda Energy Group was awarded with the prestigious award in the recognition of their enormous contributions and impacts towards the growth and the development of Africa’s energy sector.

"Through your organizations, consistency, and commitment to enhancing efficiency in utility operations and ensuring more timely and cost-efficient implementation of energy development projects while providing the overall coordination’s to ensure effective implementation of energy development plans in Rwanda and the entire East African region,” said Dr Ken Giami African leadership magazine CEO.

Rwanda Energy Group was incorporated in 2014 to expand, maintain and operate the energy infrastructure in Rwanda through its two subsidiaries; Energy Development Corporation Limited (EDCL) and Energy Utility Corporation Limited (EUCL). The objective of creating these subsidiaries among many others was to ensure focused attention to enhancing efficiency in utility operations.

It provides the overall optimization of generation capacity with the main focus on developing new energy generation and transmission projects to meet the set target by the Government of Rwanda of about 563 MW by 2018 and be able to serve diverse electricity customers.

Through their partnership with independent power power producers, they have recorded generation capacity increase of 89,5 MW during the last two years.

They have also ensured that electricity accessibility to all people is achieved and this has been done through the interconnection lines which allows power trade or exchange between the region mainly Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo and it is expected that by 2018 power exchange between all these countries shall be possible through 220 KV power transmission infrastructures with all neighbouring countries.

REG has succeeded in rural electrification where many Rural Rwandans are enjoying the benefits of electricity. Currently 600,000 customers have been connected, making 24% of the target of 70% connected households, 48% on grid while 22% off grid, with all hospitals in the country fully connected.

"We are very happy by this milestone achieved; it’s just a wakeup call for us that we need to continue working hard” said REG CEO Jean Bosco Mugiraneza.