Smart City Transport and Welfare

Capacity building programme

SPIDER, the Swedish Environmental Research Institute (IVL), the City of Kigali and Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA) will collaborate in the implementation of the new Smart City Transport and Welfare capacity building programme in Kigali, Rwanda. The initial programme round will be implemented between September 2021 and August 2022.

Smart City Transport and Welfare

The purpose of the programme is to train civil servants on international best practices pertaining to modern public and urban transport planning. The training will focus on the potentials of smart and digital solutions for  improving transport services, good governance, decreasing emission and environmental impacts. The programme is implemented between September 2021 and August 2022.

SPIDER co-ordinates the programme in collaboration with IVL -Swedish Environmental Research Institute.

SI supported by Swedish Institute logo, black text

The programme is being carried out with financial support from the Swedish Institute

Thematic areas

Planing for green transportation

  • Strategic planning for mass-transport,
  • Strategic planning for transportation solutions
  • Electric buses in Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) and Dedicated Bus Lanes (DBL)
  • Strategies for creating model shifts in transports.

Making transportation accessible

  • Making transport systems available to all
  • Benefits and trade-offs of accessible transports to improving welfare and reaching SDGs
  • Examples of actions to improve accessibility

Monitoring of smart cities

  • Follow-up on transport and travel patterns
  • Data collection and gap analysis of the statistics using ICT
  • Monitoring air emissions.

Applying ICT in transport services

  • Application of ICT to support efficient transport services to the customers
  • Actions and strategies to reduce risk of congestions and traffic planning

Trainings

There will be three training occasions in Kigali, each three days. During these occasions, trainers will provide insights and experiences on the different thematic areas. Between the training occasions the participants are expected to do work on their different change initiative tasks.

Target group

The programme target group is mid-career civil servants in Rwanda working with planning, strategies, andoperation of public transportation with the mandate to manage strategic projects. Transportation is a cross-cutting sector in terms of infrastructure and policy development. Thus, the participating civil servants will beselected from different government institutions, including the City of Kigali and the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA) and other. The number of participants in the programme is eighteen (18) civilservants. A certificate of completed training will be issued to participants who take part in the full programme (this do not equal university credit.).

Recruitment

Participants will be recruited in collaboration with all participating institutions. In consultation with SPIDER and IVL, RURA and the City of Kigali will identify and nominate participants who meet the requirements. Theprogramme ensures that the recruitment includes an equal number of men and women participants toachieve gender-balanced capacity building and equality. The trainers are provided by SPIDER and IVL.

Change initiatives

Change initiatives are the cornerstone and basis of the capacity building in the programme. The participantswill in dialogue with the SPIDER and IVL experts select change initiatives to work on during the period September 2021 – August 2022. These initiatives should represent actions that would contribute to the focusareas of the training topics stated above.

The programme team will provide mentoring and supervision for change initiatives. This mentoring will bevia remote personal meetings between the training occasions. Iteratively the trainings will support on-goingactivities aimed at improving transport services in Kigali.

Programme structure and implementation

There are three dedicated training phases where the SPIDER/IVL team will be in Rwanda together with theparticipants, and Swedish experts will be participating via video conferencing. There will be a study visit toSweden with a limited number of participants, selected by each participating institution. Between thetraining sessions in Kigali there will be assignments related to the change initiatives for the participants to work on:

First assignment

This assignment is centred on detailing the selected change initiative linked to transportation, ICT and supporting accessible transport services. Each case should then be described ontype of actions, anticipated impacts and challenges for implementation. The results will be presented tothe group during the second training occasion.

Second assignment

This assignment is to further develop the change initiative project ideas and prepare concept notes for selected projects, which will be presented during the third training occasion. The assignment also includes preparation of a project pitch to be held during the third meeting, where also funding agencies and other stakeholders will be invited.