Rwanda is experiencing the second highest economic growth rate in Sub-Saharan Africa due to its booming population, an emerging middle class and increasing urbanisation. That being said, this economic upswing has brought unsustainable building practices along with it—currently, standards related to buildings’ design phase do not require criteria for extended life cycles or a safe cycling of materials. Materials used for construction are largely imported, with only a minority produced locally. While it would serve the industry well to reduce its dependence on foreign imports of steel and cement—both lessening environmental impacts and building resilience—a lack of awareness and acceptance of circularity in the private sector and a lack of legal and financial incentives are preventing this.

To combat this, Rwanda’s Ministry of Environment published a Circular Economy Action Plan and Roadmap in 2023. This Action Plan provides a clear vision for Rwanda’s construction sector: to design, construct and use buildings in alignment with circular principles and valorise construction and demolition waste (C&DW) in ways that enable high-quality reuse, recycling and recovery. The Action Plan outlines three priorities for the built environment in Rwanda alongside the practical solutions to make them possible. 

First, a revised national Building Code and the use of the Green Building Compliance System should be enforced. This means including circular principles in the Rwanda Green Building Compliance System, and ensuring this system is applied to all buildings. Trainings and workshops should be held that provide clear guidance on the right application of the Building Code and the Compliance System, which could be offered to construction companies by the Green Building Organisation and the Rwanda Housing Authority. Ideally, each construction firm would have one or two in-house experts familiar with the Building Code and Compliance System, to help make circular buildings the new normal.

Second, the Action Plan advises that renewable and local materials and construction types should be prioritised before exhausting non-renewable materials. This will entail using alternative construction materials as well as more local construction types like rammed earth construction. To carry this out, vocational training and guidelines for the informal sector must be developed on how to shift from conventional to local alternative construction materials and how to better integrate into the formal sector.

Finally, the Action Plan calls for the development of national guidelines on how to characterise and valorise Construction and Demolition Waste (C&DW). National guidelines should include a transitory plan and clear guidance for construction companies and recyclers to identify different types of waste, which is essential for choosing the most appropriate recycling or recovering technique. Techniques and enablers for dismantling, repairing and reusing building elements should also be established to prevent demolition and keep materials in use at their highest value. Lastly, the guidelines should contain guidance on how to recycle different types of C&DW in the most circular way: avoiding low-grade applications such as backfilling, for example

It may be too soon to measure the impacts of the Circular Economy Action Plan and Roadmap in Rwanda, but the Plan serves as a huge step in the right direction to transforming a wasteful and material-intensive industry. What’s more, the Plan’s potential impacts transcend borders, offering a replicable framework for countries with similar economies to work towards a more circular built environment.

Photo by Dieuvain Musaghi on Unsplash