East African Business Week

KIGALI, RWANDA - Rwanda's long awaited private investment into methane gas to produce 100 megawatts of electricity is back to life after being off-track one year.
Recently, the project in Kibuye, western Rwanda received a World Bank guarantee of $140 million against political risks.
MIGA's guarantee follows the visit by the Work Bank President Mr. Robert Zoellick to methane rich Lake Kivu in August 2009.
The Bank's Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) issued the guarantee three months after the Rwandan government threatened to review the project because of delays.
The political insurance clears doubt among potential lenders to the US$325 million gas-to-power project owned by ContourGlobal, a US based oil and gas firm.
The project is to be implemented by CountourGlobal's Rwanda based subsidiary Kivuwatt.
MIGA said in a statement that Kivuwatt is currently finalising a project financing with a lending syndicate led by the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund, the Dutch development bank FMO and the African Development Bank.
Rwanda's State Minister for Energy and Water Ms. Coletha Ruhamya welcomed the move.
"Wewant the project to move," Ms. Ruhamya told East African Business Week last week.
According to MIGA, Rwanda has potential to grow its economy but limited power supply is one of the major challenges facing the country.
If the Kivuwatt starts power production, it is expected to increase Rwanda's power supply, which is currently less than 70 megawatts.
Rwanda targets to have at least 1000 megawatts by 2017 and 50% of its population should have access on electricity from the current 15%.
 The government says it will spend at least $4billion to meet both targets.
The 100 megawatt was expected to partly narrow down the government's energy deficit and lower the cost of electricity to the local firms as well as the population, according to former State Minister for Energy and Water Albert Butare.
Kivuwatt seeks to extract Methane gas from Lake Kivu in western Rwanda, convert it into electricity of which the government will buy.
Government and ContourGlobal signed an agreement in March 2009 to kick off the project that is  expected to deliver electricity in two phases.
The first phase of 25 megawatts was supposed to be ready by 2010 while the second one of 75 megawatts was to be completed by 2012.
But because of lack of funding, the project failed to start until February this year when the government threatened to review the agreement.
Early this year, Kivuwatt received a $25 million loan from the African Development Bank to start operations.
MIGA's statement says that Kivuwatt is currently under construction in Kibuye, west of Rwanda where the barge housing the gas extraction facility is nearing completion.
The statement further says that the facility is expected to be launched early June.
The statement further says that a Finland based company Wartsila is manufacturing the electricity generating engines and will begin constructing the power generating station for the plant beginning in May 2011.
"The project is expected to be placed into service in 2012," adds MIGA.
Lake Kivu is endowed with more than 60 billion cubic meters of methane gas dissolved deep in the waters.
The lake is located in the East of Democratic of Congo (DRC) and west of Rwanda.
East African Business Week could not get a comment from Kivuwatt officials in Rwanda, as their cellular numbers were not available by press time.