Abstract
Rwanda is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley in Central Africa and is home to around 12,943,132 people. Initially under German colonial rule in 1898, Belgian forces captured Rwanda in 1916 during World War I; Rwanda established its independence in 1962 [1]. Historically, Rwanda is fairly unique in the energy sector; until 2004, Rwanda relied solely on hydropower for electricity, and heavily used, and still uses, primarily biomass for heating and cooking. In late 2004, the Rwandan government made the choice of renting diesel generators from private companies at high cost to provide more energy to the country [2]. The Rwanda Energy Group (REG) was established in 2014 and is a government-owned holding company that is responsible for all import, export, generation, and transmission of electricity in Rwanda [3]. Though historically Rwanda was primarily powered by hydropower, still to this day hydropower contributes to over half of the country’s electricity generation and has various new projects in the works.
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Petrovic, S., Ewing, J. (2023). Rwanda. In: Petrovic, S. (eds) World Energy Handbook. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31625-8_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31625-8_11
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