Participants at the report launch in Kigali city
Transparency International Rwanda (TI-Rwanda) has successfully launched its latest report that provides a comprehensive analysis of awareness, attitudes and practice toward open contracting in Rwanda.
The report dubbed “Assessment on Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice on Open Contracting in Public Procurement in Rwanda” was launched this December 19, 2024 bringing different together stakeholders to chart a path toward enhancing transparency and accountability in public procurement system.
The procurement sector has the biggest flow of government money in tender processes but the findings show that despite the digitalization of procurement procedures, findings showed that only 8.55% have public access to procurement data, even when 94% are aware of the concept of open contracting.
Alain Sano Mugenzi, the Monitoring & Evaluation and Knowledge Management Coordinator at TI-R
Alain Sano Mugenzi, the Monitoring & Evaluation and Knowledge Management Coordinator at TI-R said that these low figures indicate that the right to access the open data is demanding and thus a need to create more awareness.
Apollinaire Mupiganyi, Executive Director of TI-Rwanda, emphasized the importance of transparency in ensuring equitable resource allocation.
“While Rwanda has made commendable strides in promoting transparency in public procurement, challenges such as corruption and limited access to information continue to hinder the full realization of open contracting principles.
“This report offers a roadmap for addressing these barriers and building an inclusive, accountable procurement system,” Mupiganyi said.
Apollinaire Mupiganyi, Executive Director of TI-Rwanda
According to the report, 71% of respondent’s view Rwanda’s public procurement as transparent, reflecting a generally positive perception of the system.
However, barriers such as corruption, inadequate digital infrastructure, and restricted access to procurement information persist, hindering full transparency.
While 55.56% of respondents identify transparency across all procurement stages, awareness of critical aspects like public access to data and accountability remains also limited.
The report highlighted the need for collective efforts to address existing gaps in Rwanda’s procurement system with key recommendations include enhancing digital infrastructure to ensure public access to procurement data and equipping stakeholders, especially CSOs and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with the necessary tools and knowledge through capacity-building initiatives.
Strengthening enforcement mechanisms to uphold transparency and accountability at all procurement stages is essential to tackling persistent issues like corruption and limited access to information.
“By implementing these reforms, Rwanda can foster a more transparent, inclusive, and efficient public procurement system aligned with global best practices,” TI-Rwanda said.
Rwanda is currently working with Open Contracting Partnership to building an existing digital procurement platform (Umucyo) to make it easy to see the contracts, process, and monitoring.
Edwin Muhumuza, the Head of Africa at Open Contracting Partnership stated that this is going to help Rwanda to recognize how public procurement contributes to development and data being publically available will improve open contracting.
“Next year, we want to work on publicizing these tools in Rwanda so that the public and CSOs know to improve the public procurement space,” Muhumuza said.
Francine Gatarayiha Usanase, the Program Manager of e-Procurement – Umucyo System.
Francine Gatarayiha Usanase, the Program Manager of e-Procurement – Umucyo System explained that the information on open contracting data is public and we are improving it with Open Contracting Data Standards (OCDS) to aggregate the data for better use.
“The data is available but people don’t know it, that is why we need other stakeholders to create awareness on this public data,” she explained.
“There is some data which is not meant to be public and that is according to international standards we follow, but there is a conception that data is hidden therefore a need to create awareness.
While legally the public can do oversight in open contracting but not participate in evaluation of tenders, Dr. Enock Byiringiro, a Senior Researcher TI-R said that a legal framework must be put in place to allow reporting of cases involving conflict of interest and visible misuse of public funds.
“We need a window on the umucyo platform for citizens to report public tender abuse because that doesn’t exist and it is an international standard. This practice is possible because we have a bidding agreement and obliged to meet these principles,” Byiringiro said.
Dr. Enock Byiringiro (2nd right), a Senior Researcher TI-R
