We exploit methane; we do big things!

Rwanda is about to put to com­mercial use a natural resource that just a few years ago no one thought the country had a snowball’s chance in hell of ever exploiting.

Later this year, the first big electric power project to use Lake Kivu meth­ane gas goes into full production. Con­tour Global, a US-based power supply company will be the investor whose Ki­vuWatt power station will be generat­ing 25 megawatts of electricity for the national grid – more power than most of the small hydroelectric plants extant in Rwanda produce, combined. Hallelu­jah! Personally I will make a costly in­vestment in a bottle of good champagne and pop it upon news that the methane power is finally coursing through the grid. Contour Global is investing over US$ 142 million in KivuWatt. This is one of the single biggest infusions of foreign direct invest in the Rwandan economy in the past few years. But not only that, it means if the investors are ready to sink that kind of money in a project, its viability is no longer in any doubt.

Every Rwandan that loves their coun­try should be celebrating.

Successful exploitation of the meth­ane gas means we just latched onto something not many of us thought we had – a natural resource from which Rwanda can earn something resembling real wealth! We may not have oil; may­be some could be discovered in the fu­ture. We could discover more minerals wealth in the future, to add to the little we have. But for the moment, the meth­ane will do very well, thank you very much!

It does not yet seem to have sunk into the collective conscious of the Rwandan public, but we have a resource that not only means the cost of power (and thus of doing business) will go considerably down, it also means that hundreds of thousands of the most impoverished Rwandans will use electricity in their homes for the very first time. Also, the fact other investors too are eyeing the methane not only means thousands of new jobs are coming in the energy sec­tor, it also means we will have a sur­plus of power to export to neighboring, power-thirsty countries – something that will go a long way in reducing the yawning trade deficits we currently are running against those countries. (Some experts estimate we could generate 250 megawatts from the Kivu for the next one hundred years).

In short, Rwanda is about to receive a massive boost in its poverty-combating efforts, and all the while depleting the carbon dioxide whose lethal nature is best exemplified by an explosion on a lake very similar to the Kivu – Camer­oon’s Lake Nyos whose gas erupted in a dense cloud in 1986, killing about 1800 people living along its shores.

Who would have thought it; who would have thought Rwanda finally would harness a source of wealth this substantial, and what that means to the country’s fortunes? Not many did.

So what happened? What happened is that someone back in the early 2000s brought President Kagame up to speed about the potentialities of producing power with the gas. And the head of state, ever eager and on the lookout for such opportunities for the country, im­mediately latched onto the idea, and took full ownership of it. Beer brewers Bralirwa had in the past sometimes used a little, methane-powered power gener­ator for some of its needs. If they could do it, went the reasoning, why couldn’t it be done on a much bigger scale?

President Kagame was excited by the idea. He almost was obsessed with it. No one had ever run a commercial power-plant using methane gas, anywhere in the world, before. But if it hadn’t been done, it surely didn’t mean it couldn’t?

This is where Kagame proves to be a visionary leader. He gave the Ministry of Infrastructure the brief to go ahead and explore all the possibilities. Consult the best engineers in the world. Do ev­erything. Of course mistakes will hap­pen, especially when people are grop­ing their way around, in the dark like that. They did attract a few outside “in­vestors” who turned out to be no better than charlatans and conmen. Rwanda lost money on them, dismissed them, and decided to go it alone. Do every­thing required, use all the money re­quired, was the instruction from the President’s office.

In came a brilliant, German-trained young Rwandan engineer, Alexis Kabu­to, to take charge. Kabuto throws all his energy into finding the best, most suit­able turbines; he works with a bunch of Israelis and other people, and slowly but surely he works through all the ob­stacles. Then, a couple of years ago, Ka­buto and his team complete a small, ex­perimental plant, KP1, built to produce 4 megawatts of power. The government has spent in excess of US$ 20 million (over 1.4 billion francs) of its money on it. It is money they invested with the knowledge it surely could be lost on an unproven technology. But there was no giving up; no going back. Spend the money, build the thing, and if it works, that is the confidence booster investors will need to bring their own cash. Or look at the project, decide it isn’t wor­thy the effort and resources, and do nothing. It was a no brainer. The gov­ernment took on a herculean task, saw it through completion, and the investors have come. Contour’s 142 million dol­lars says it all.

The Rwandan spirit during the Kagame administration has become: we are a small country with big ambitions! Our size will not deter us from doing big things! And no risk is too great, if the end result may mean we achieve those big things!

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Posted by Shyaka Kanuma on Feb 20 2012. Filed under Opinion, Other News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry