Rwanda has launched a $35 million facility inland cargo handling facility with a capacity to handle 50,000 containers and 650,000 tonnes of warehousing capacity to ease the trade of goods.
The Masaka based facility that sits on about 30 hectares of land will be operated by Dubai Ports World (DPW) group, a Dubai based global port operator.
The new facility was established under a public-private partnership framework, which is a result of a 25-year concession agreement signed in 2016 between the Government of Rwanda and DP World, a United Arab Emirates-based firm.
The platform is a customs-controlled facility spread over 13 hectares and features an Inland Container Terminal (ICT) with modern warehousing capacity, a container yard, administrative and services buildings, and parking areas.
It is envisaged that the facility will help decongest MAGERWA, Rwanda’s main inland cargo handling facility located in Kigali, which handles the majority of Rwanda’s imports and exports.
“The platform operates fully as a port service, quite different from the existing handling facility (MAGERWA). MAGERWA has been there for more than 49 years, and it is unable to deal with the increasing demand for such services,” Fred Seka, the President of the Federation of East African Freight Forwarders Associations (FEAFFA) said.
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President Paul Kagame officially inaugurated the Kigali logistics platform, where he said “With the launch…, Rwanda is doing its part to connect with the larger market of more than 1.2 billion consumers in Africa and beyond,” the President noted.
“The Kigali Logistics Platform is really getting up and running, at a pivotal moment in our continent’s economic transformation.”
