Kigali, 31 August 2015 – UN-Habitat and its partners recently held a workshop on Increasing the Energy and Resource Efficiency of Rwanda Association of Manufacturing Companies in the Rwandan capital. The manufacturing sector in Rwanda is growing, and currently accounting for approximately 325 million US$ annually, which is equivalent to about 5.1 % of Rwanda’s gross domestic product (GDP). The workshop is directly connected to the UN-Habitat’s work to contribute to addressing the infrastructure needs of cities to supply industrial consumers with energy, water and waste management services and to evaluate links and synergies between these sectors. In the initial round of introduction at the workshop, the major problems experienced by all companies was said to be the high price of electricity of about 0.20 US$ / kWh (at medium voltage, higher peak time). Another problem is the intermitted supply of power with frequent cut-offs and voltage fluctuations, which lowers the productivity and damages machines. Sharing success stories for capacity building The Rwanda Association of Manufactures (RAM) currently represents the majority of manufacturing companies in the country and strives to enhance the business opportunities and environment for Rwandan manufacturers. This includes capacity building by promoting ideas and tools to improve the energy efficiency and sustainability of the production. Through the Rapid Planning project, UN-Habitat will continue to assist RAM in evaluating opportunities to increase the energy and resource efficiency of the industrial sector in Kigali in years to come. This will strengthen collaboration by sharing success stories, capacity building of RAM company managers and could result in projects where heat and electricity are produced efficiently in combined heat and power mode (CHP) and the material flow between companies is improved. UN-Habitat is part of the consortium implementing the action oriented urban research project “Rapid Planning –Sustainable Infrastructure, Environmental and Resource Management for Highly Dynamic Metropolises”, a project funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research. This five-year project (2014-2019) is currently implemented in Danang (Vietnam), Assiut (Egypt) and Kigali (Rwanda) as case cities. The RAM-workshop itself was spearheaded by the Universities of Stuttgart and the Heidelberg Institute for Energy and Environment (IFEU).