Rwandan Affordable Housing Policy

Grasp Design was tasked to work on a standards document for affordable housing in Rwanda. The Rwandan Government required a guide for future affordable housing developments through PPP arrangements between private developers and the government. This is now to be implemented through an instruction from the Prime Minister.

Working with IPE Global, MININFRA (Rwanda Ministry of Infrastructure), RHA (Rwanda Housing Authority), RTDA (Rwanda Transport Development Agency), WASAC (Water and Sanitation Corporation Limited), and REG (Rwanda Energy Group) allowed us to localise the solutions and ensure that the designs and costs that we had provided were reflective of the situation on the ground. We were able to optimize unit typologies and allow flexible unit conversions and provided sample neighbourhood designs for each of the seven districts based on the design principles that we had set forward.

Due to the hilly terrain in most of Rwanda, the neighbourhood designs were consciously designed to minimize earthwork costs. The neighbourhood designs were based on the principles of defensible spaces where security through design is achieved. We also ensured that there was visual identity within the neighbourhoods by avoiding the monotony of a single block type.