If you have been or intend to use the cover of the night or weekends to illegally construct or apply unwarranted extensions on your house, then your days are numbered. Rapid urbanization in developing countries often results in uncontrolled urban growth. In order to support sustainable urban development, measures need to be put in place to control informal settlements. In Kigali, authorities are in the process of deploying an advanced aero-mapping technology that will be aligned with the Building Permits Management Information System (BPMIS) and the Online Kigali City Masterplan to monitor informal settlements; implying that any construction that is not within the BPMIS will be remotely identified. When the Senatorial Committee on Political Affairs and Governance, led by Senator Lambert Dushimimana visited the City Hall last week, some of the key issues raised included informal settlements that sprout up in different neighbourhoods despite efforts in place to curb them. Senators wanted to know what more the city management is doing to deal with informal settlements. It was during the meeting that Senators were informed of the new system being developed that will use imagery to identify any informal structure being put up. In an exclusive interview with The New Times, the city’s Vice-Mayor in charge of Urbanisation and Infrastructure, Merard Mpabwanamaguru gave a detailed insight on the state of informal settlements, progress on the new system and how it will solve issues related to informal settlements that keep on mushrooming despite government having invested resources, guidelines and several legal instruments to contain this. “There are people who persistently put up structures illegally. They construct at night. Most of the houses that are affected by disasters are the informal ones. To deal with this, we decided that, in addition to the regular inspections that we do, to come up with satellite-generated images showing us which houses were constructed and their location,” said Mpabwanamaguru. He added that; “All the permits that we have issued are now georeferenced. All our land and construction systems communicate to each other and they generate data which shows what permit was issued, if it is construction or renovation. The data overlays itself on the system and shows you which house is within the issued permit and which one has violated the permit.” There are cases of people who request for renovation permits and end up doing extensions on the house. The system easily detects this. “As we update of Cadastral GIS data in the masterplan every three months we will be able to see every house that came up, its UPI and the person it is registered on. The data will be shared with construction inspectors at the sector level and anything that is constructed illegally, it is removed,” added Mpabwanamaguru. This new system is being developed by Esri Rwanda Limited which specializes in ArcGIS software, mapping and data analytics to deliver location intelligence. Esri Rwanda is connecting the new software to BPMIS and the Online Kigali Masterplan System. According to Gasabo District Deputy District Executive Administrator, Regis Mudaheranwa, the system comes with a lot of advantages that will address many issues causing informal settlements. The system will have several advantages, we will have quick means to access construction information, effective storage of data and also accountability in following up all cases reported on the system, said Mudaheranwa. The use of the new satellite imagery system will indeed give Kigali the opportunity to link geographic locations with accurate socio-economic data, which is a powerful tool in planning human settlements be they formal or informal Josephine Malonza, a lecturer at the school of Architecture, University of Rwanda, believes that the use of Technology in settlement planning and coordination is one of the effective antidotes in addressing informal settlement in rapid urbanization. “With technology, the city is able to generate data really quickly, in order to inform policy in good timing. We have always wondered why urbanization runs at cheetah-speed while urban planning and policy formulation walks at chameleon-speed! Technology is therefore a great intervention to this gap,” she said. Malonza who describes herself as an architect and urban designer with keen interest in the dialectical relations between Architecture and Society also says that the new technology will help in analysing the growth and changes in informal settlements which are a quite dynamic phenomenon and more often than not with limited data for planning. “The other good thing about technology is that it will also have in place a monitoring component that combines both special and social data. Informal settlements are home to the most socially and economically vulnerable people in a city, a common feature in most developing countries. Therefore, many interventions are always welcome with regard to improving the living conditions of people living there. I believe that the first step is designing with people for people,” she said. The development comes a year after Rwanda Land Management and Use Authority (RLMUA) issued guidelines on informal settlement. In an October 2021 interview with The New Times, the Director General of RLMUA Espérance Mukamana, said that lack of clear guidelines had led to the increase of informal settlements in the country. Reports indicate that over 61 per cent of the Rwandan population currently live in informal settlements and plans are underway to have them relocated to well-planned settlements. The country’s population is projected to increase nearly two-fold by 2050; from the current 12 million to 22 million people, according to estimates from the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR). According to estimates by Rwanda Housing Authority, the country needs at least 5.5 million housing units up from 2.5 million units in 2019 to accommodate an estimated 22 million people in 2050. It is projected that 90 percent of Kigali dwellers will be living in formal settlement by 2050.
