KIGALI: Egypt's Orascom Construction Industries plans to invest up to $130 million in Rwanda in the next three to four years to build a methane power plant to produce 50 megawatts, a company official said on Tuesday. Only 14 percent of the Rwanda's population has access to electricity, according to the country's energy ministry. The country had an installed capacity of only 69 MW in 2009, but plans to increase this to 130 MW by the end of 2012 through investments in small hydropower and methane gas plants. On Tuesday Rwanda and Orascom Construction signed a deal to construct and maintain a methane gas plant at Lake Kivu. "It's very early to talk in accurate numbers, but we think investing in the first 50 Megawatts will be in the range of between $100 to $130 million, but this is very rough," Mohamed Safeyeldin, Director Africa Operations for Orascom, told a news conference. Coletha Ruhamya, minister of state in charge of energy, said they planned to ramp up production in the next few years and connect more people to the grid. "We are targeting to have a thousand megawatts in seven years and connecting at least 50 percent of people to electricity," Ruhamya said. "To get to the first megawatts can take or three or four years." Rwanda is also looking at the possibility of harnessing geothermal power, produced by tapping the steam created by water trapped near hot rocks in the earth.
