A hundred new buses started transporting passengers in the City of Kigali on Friday, January 19, in a bid to improve public transport in Kigali.
According to the City of Kigali, 40 of the buses arrived in Rwanda in November 2023 while 60 arrived in December.
The 100 buses—as the first batch of the procurement—were acquired by eight companies that fulfilled bidding requirements, the City of Kigali announced on X. The companies are Yahoo Car Express, Remera Transport Cooperative, Nyabugogo Transport Cooperative, City Centre Transport Cooperative, S.U Direct Services, Jali Transport, 4G Ju Transport and RITCO, the city indicated.
Each bus has the capacity to transport 70 passengers, and complement the already existing public bus fleet in Kigali.
It is part of the 305 buses that the government pledged during the 18th National Dialogue (Umushyikirano) on February 27, 2023, intending to address the fleet shortage.
Meanwhile, data from the City of Kigali, as of May 4, 2023, suggests that its fleet of buses decreased from over 500 in 2013 to about 300 by then—implying a 40 per cent drop over the past 10 years.