Rwanda to construct new Airport near Kigali

Today RwandAir has launched its very first commercial flight to the capital city of Benin’s capital of Cotonou (IATA: COO or ICAO: DBBB) operating into the main Bernadin Gantin International Airport, also referred to as Cadjehoun International Airport.

This actually marks the beginning of a long-planned expansion of its destinations across the African continent before the delivery another aircraft yet to be delivery in the coming months including adding Abidjan at the start of the month of October.

The main airport center of RwandAir is the not too long ago expanded as well as upgraded Kigali International Airport, which was in the past referred to as Kanombe International Airport.

Nevertheless, this airport is going to be among the two main airports around Kigali, as the government of Rwanda yesterday inked a deal to start the construction of a new airport – the Bugesera International Airport, approximately twenty five kilometers from the capital city of Rwanda – Kigali.

Aviation and Travel Logistics Holdings Limited (ATL Limited) is Rwanda’s recently established parastatal company that has been granted the responsibility to oversee the entire aviation industry which includes all airports and side-line businesses.

It is planned that the first phase of the Construction will begin in the middle of 2017 and that phase is estimated to cost 418million US Dollars.

It was found out that this version of airport construction is going to follow the guidelines of BOOT, by which ‘Mota Engineering and Construction Africa – a Portuguese company is going to acquire finances, then build and afterwards operate this airport for the first Twenty five years – with an extra optional 15 years – before transferring this facility back to the government of Rwanda.

This plan is going to save the government of Rwanda as well as the taxpayer an entire 818million US Dollars, as the second Phase of this construction is going to cost yet another 400million US Dollar.

Aviation experts were quick to say that the Twenty eight months estimated construction period for the first Phase might be over upbeat, considering the common delays in the finishing of the national conference centre as well as the nearby hotel, which started operations in the middle of the year and is currently run by Radisson Blu, along with comparable challenges experienced by the brand-new Kigali Marriott Hotel, which were both delayed by nearly 3 years.

Perhaps the government of Rwanda has learned a good lesson from all those delays as well as how to handle them. A year ago they fired the Chinese contractors who smudged the completion of the convention centre and instead brought up a Turkish contractor to complete the job.

Now we hope that these Portuguese will carefully put all these challenges into consideration and be well prepared. Although the Rwandan government won’t invest any finances in the construction of the airport as per the agreement signed, they are going to still be eager to see that all the deadlines are met and that the new airport is operational come end 2019.

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