Stakeholders’ Perception of Socio-Economic Benefits of Rural Electrification Programme in Rwanda

Abstract

This topic entitled the ‘’Stakeholders’ Perception of Socio-Economic Benefits of Rural Electrification Programme in Rwanda” was carrying out to: Assess the impact of rural electrification in the socio-Economic development; To raise the standards of living of rural people through the delivery of enhanced social services in health, education and income generation projects; to assess the progress of rural electrification in Rwanda; The role of the government of Rwanda in promoting rural electrification; To suggest measures for further improvement in rural electrification programme in Rwanda which will help reverse rural to urban migration. The researcher covered different areas of the country. The data was collected through a primary and secondary research. For the primary research, the questionnaire was used to collect the data for mostly literate respondents; Secondary research, the data was collected from library and other internal sources and documents from REG. Interview was conducted with REG officials and other agencies and the illiterate respondents. To evaluate the study data was analyzed with the aid of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 15.0 for windows Evaluation Version).We used the sampling of 388 questionnaires have been distributed to the respondents as representative sample. The results have shown that that, there is a relationship between rural electrification and economic benefits 87,6% of the respondents agree that more small businesses are operating because of rural electrification, 96.6 % of the respondents agree that electricity has improved communication and access to information (Telephone, TV, Radio…), 86.3 % of respondents agree that rural electrification increased service delivery, 80.2 % of the respondents agree that small and medium industries have increased, 73.8 % of the respondents agree that the family revenue has increased because of electrification, 88.6 % of the respondents agree that the value of land and buildings (business and homes) increased. The respondents’ findings agreed that rural electrification provides social benefits (with a mean 3.67) and economic benefits (with a mean of 3.83). Based on all findings, the perception from the electrified householders revealed that a social and economic benefit exists among different groups with slight different.