The Africa Smart Cities Investment Summit (ASCIS) 2023 convened in Kigali from 06-08 September 2023 under the theme: Leadership for Smart Cities – Investing in Inclusive and Sustainable Cities of the Future.
The summit brought together visionaries, experts, and industry leaders to discuss the immense potential of smart cities to drive sustainable growth, enhance livability, and foster innovation across Africa.

The vision of Smart Africa is to transform Africa into a single digital market and Rwanda Vision 2050 aspires for Rwanda to become data driven economy. In 2020 Rwanda put in place smart city masterplan according to which, Rwanda’s smart cities, leaders and citizens should use data, information, and knowledge to ensure co-created and sustainable future.
The smart city masterplan intends to guide district mayors and urban managers to develop their own city in 10 steps city should go through to achieve the smart city vision, 6th step is Building urban dynamic map (UDM).

In the past 4 years, Enabel’s Urbanisation project (UEDI) has been supporting Rwanda to reach Smart Africa and Rwanda vision through several initiatives notably by working with the Ministry of Infrastructure and Rwanda Housing Authority to build the Urban Dynamic Map (UDM) for five cities of Bugesera, Muhanga, Musanze, Rubavu and Rwamagana, to contribute to their undertakings toward becoming smart cities.

Rwandan Ministry of Infrastructure launched the Urban Dynamic Map developed in partnership with Enabel. The launch occurred on Day two of the summit during a session themed ‘Power of place-leveraging Geospatial data to build smarter and Inclusive cities’.

During this session, a Pannel discussion led by Enabel, Ministry of Infrastructure (MININFRA), Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MINECOFIN), Rwanda Information Society (RISA), Rwanda Space Agency (RSA), Ministry of Local Government (MINALOC) and beneficiary Districts was held to not only reflect on the journey the UDM development went through and the benefits that come with it but also to discuss the way forward and potential scaleup.