The villages in Juru Sector

In search of the village

In October 2020, in cooperation with the Bugesera District Mayor, we visited a number of villages with challenges in the areas of electricity, water and cooking energy.

We chose the twin village Bisagara/Rugarama as the pilot village because it is sufficiently large and has a school. Thanks to Camille and Sylvère, the tireless guides.

Where it all began: Bisagara and Rugarama

Bisagara and Rugarama have grown together. The twin village has roughly 2,600 inhabitants living in 600 households. It is located in the Juru "cell" in Bugesera district, which has 500,000 inhabitants. Although not far from Rwanda's capital Kigali as the crow flies, the journey by car from Kigali to the village takes almost two hours, half of which is on poorly paved roads

The village center

The twin village has a small centre with several shops. The municipal administration, the "Juru Cell Office", and a small health post are also located there. Close to the village centre is a primary school (grades 1-6) with 800 pupils.

The periphery

The village extends over several square kilometres, outside the village centre with mainly very simple buildings, partly made of dried clay bricks.

The employment

Most of the inhabitants are farmers, mainly growing bananas, coffee and vegetables. There is no on-site processing of agricultural products. The market town of Kabukuba, which is the administrative centre of the Juru Sector, is six kilometres away. There are two small mines (tungsten, tin ore) in the village's catchment area.   

Expansion of the project area to the entire Juru Sector

Since 2023, we have been supporting development in the entire Juru cell (7,000 inhabitants) and have carried out the first school project in the similarly sized Mugorore cell. Since 2024, we have been implementing projects in the entire Juru sector, which has a population of 34,000. One flagship project is the expansion of the vocational school in the main town of Kabukuba. We are financing the construction of four new classrooms, two of which we are equipping as smart classrooms with modern computers to enable the school to offer two new training programmes for IT careers.