Nearly one million rural households currently living outside designated settlement areas are expected to gradually move into planned settlements as the government implements its 2020–2050 National Land Use Master Plan.

Authorities say the transition will be progressive rather than an immediate mass relocation, with priority given to households living in high-risk and disaster-prone areas.

Alexis Rutagengwa, Head of the Land Use Management and Mapping Department at the National Land Authority (NLA), said about 65 per cent of rural households currently live in planned settlements, while the rest live in dispersed or spontaneous settlement patterns.

Rwanda has slightly more than 3.3 million households, including about 2.3 million in rural areas.

The households were identified by The Fifth Rwanda Population and Housing Census (RPHC2022) by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR).

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Based on the 65 per cent estimate, about 1.5 million rural households are already living in planned settlements, leaving roughly 805,000 outside designated settlement areas.

NLA estimates that about 9 per cent of households live in spontaneous or informal settlements, while about 15 per cent live in dispersed or isolated housing.

Spontaneous settlements generally develop outside official planning frameworks, often before roads, drainage, water, electricity and other essential services are provided.

Dispersed settlements, meanwhile, consist of houses spread over large areas rather than concentrated in planned villages or neighbourhoods.

Rutagengwa said households living outside planned settlements would not necessarily be required to relocate immediately.

"The government's approach is to gradually transform settlement patterns while avoiding unnecessary displacement,” he said.

3,000 planned settlement sites

Under the 2020–2050 National Land Use Master Plan, only 15.2 per cent of Rwanda's land is allocated for human settlement.

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The plan reduced the number of scattered settlement sites from about 14,000 to approximately 3,000, with the aim of making it easier and more cost-effective to provide infrastructure and public services.

Rutagengwa said the roughly 3,000 sites should not be understood as entirely new settlements that have to be developed from scratch.

"The approximately 3,000 rural settlement sites identified under the 2020–2050 National Land Use Master Plan represent a long-term planned settlement structure rather than 3,000 sites that need to be developed from scratch,” he said.

Each site can contain several rural residential neighbourhoods, with different levels of infrastructure development.

Many households are already living within designated settlement areas, although some neighbourhoods have roads and other basic services while others still require further investment.

"The development of these areas is therefore being undertaken progressively through local development programmes,” Rutagengwa said.

Community initiatives such as Umuganda, the Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme and other local development programmes are also expected to contribute to improving access roads and basic services alongside government infrastructure investment.

Rutagengwa said such an approach could be more practical for rural settlements than attempting to provide full infrastructure to every settlement site at once.

No immediate mass relocation

The settlement programme has raised questions about what will happen to households living on agricultural land or in other areas not designated for residential development, particularly those without land in planned settlement areas.

Rutagengwa said such households would not automatically be forced to relocate.

"Households already settled in areas that are not designated for settlement will not necessarily be required to relocate immediately,” he said.

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Some households may have the capacity to move into appropriate planned settlement areas on their own, while others could need more time as designated settlement areas are developed and serviced.

Priority, however, will be given to households living in areas considered unsafe.

"The most urgent priority is households living in high-risk zones and hazard-prone areas, where relocation may be necessary to protect lives and property,” Rutagengwa said.

"For such cases, the government will apply appropriate resettlement and relocation mechanisms in line with the applicable policies and laws.”

For households outside high-risk areas, the transition will be gradual and will take into account the availability of planned and serviced settlement areas as well as individual household circumstances.

Western Province

The challenge is particularly visible in Western Province, where more than 214,000 households, representing about 29 per cent of households in the province, live outside areas designated for residential settlement.

Governor Jean Bosco Ntibitura said the province has about 671,000 households, of which approximately 457,000, or 71 per cent, live in designated settlement areas.

"The others who live in areas that are not designated as settlements will gradually move towards those areas because all infrastructure is provided in designated settlements,” Ntibitura said.

He said people living outside designated settlement areas would not immediately be relocated because some planned settlement sites have yet to be fully developed.

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"That is why, when people apply for building permits, it is first checked whether the area where they want to build is designated for residential use,” he said.

41,000 households targeted by 2029

The Rwanda Housing Authority has set a target of relocating more than 41,000 households into planned and resilient settlements equipped with essential infrastructure by 2029.

The target includes 32,000 households currently living in scattered rural settlements, 3,436 households in informal urban settlements and 6,089 households living in high-risk areas vulnerable to disasters.

The relocation programme began in the 2024/25 financial year under the Second National Strategy for Transformation.

Between 2017 and 2024, Rwanda relocated 144,628 households into planned settlements nationwide.

Adding the current target of 32,000 households from scattered rural settlements would bring the cumulative number relocated into planned settlements to 176,628 by 2029.

During the same 2017–2024 period, at least 20,643 households were relocated from disaster-prone areas. With the additional 6,089 households targeted, the cumulative number relocated from high-risk areas would rise to more than 26,700 by 2029.

Authorities also plan to prepare detailed physical plans covering more than 8,564 hectares of urban and rural settlement areas.

Part of broader urbanisation drive

The planned settlement programme is also closely linked to Rwanda's broader urbanisation strategy.

Under the National Urbanisation Policy, the country's urbanisation rate is projected to rise from 35 per cent in 2024 to 52.7 per cent by 2035 and 70 per cent by 2050.

NLA projects that about 15.4 million people, equivalent to 70 per cent of a projected population of 22.1 million, will live in urban areas by 2050.

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Under the revised framework, Rwanda plans to develop 101 urban areas, including Kigali City, three satellite cities, eight secondary cities, 16 district towns and 73 Rurban Centres.

Kigali is expected to accommodate about 3.8 million people by 2050, while each satellite and secondary city is expected to accommodate up to 650,000 residents.

The long-term objective is to concentrate housing in planned areas where roads, water, electricity and other public services can be provided more efficiently, while allowing households outside those areas to transition progressively.