More than 2.5m Rwandans now using mobile payments

The number of mobile payments subscribers in Rwanda has reached more than 2.5 million, according to figures in the recently-published Rwandan ICT Sector Profile. The document also shows that the he number of mobile cellular phone subscribers has increased to 63% from 55% last year while the total number of automated teller machines (ATM) reached 333.

The Minister of Youth and ICT, Jean Philbert Nsengimana, said that the country’s national ICT plan aims to further leverage the power of ICTs in important areas such as health, education, governance, finance and agriculture.

“Rwanda is also implementing necessary policies and plans capable of addressing challenges in the information and technology age in order to accelerate the country’s socio- economic development process. If you take the example of the agriculture sector for example, we have recorded an increase in the number of e-soko SMS and web based users, which has reached 11,815 and 4,640 respectively in 2013,” he added.

The ICT Sector Profile-2013 takes into consideration internationally recognised reports used to measure Information society and e-Government developments, respectively the “Measuring the Information Society” measured by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the “UN e-Government Survey” measured by the United Nations (UN).

The ICT Sector Profile 2013 particularly features the ICT for Socio-Economic Development in Rwanda, particularly for the five priority sectors namely, the Governance Sector, the Health Sector, the Education Sector, the Agriculture sector and the Business & Finance Sector, with a special focus on tracking the use of the deployed systems and applications.

source:biztechafrica