Kigali the cleanest, safest, fastest and most liveable city in Africa

In the last couple of weeks, several reports came out ranking Kigali and Rwanda on top that I would like to share with you, particularly for those of you for whom Rwanda is still associated with the genocide memory.

1) Rwanda the safest place in Africa.

The Gallup’s World Poll — the only global study of its kind — spans more than 150 countries. Gallup typically surveys 1,000 adults in each country at least once a year, using a standard set of core questions that Gallup translates into the major languages of the respective country. In their last report "Global States of Mind: New Metrics for world leaders" published in October 2012, Rwanda tops the ranking of countries where people feel safe in front of Georgia, Qatar and Singapore. This is based on people's sense of personal security in their neighborhoods and their personal experiences with crime and law enforcement. One of our Chinese students who recently spent 10 weeks in Kigali said "I often worked in CMU Rwanda campus till about 1 AM and went back to my hotel. I felt it very very safe. I was no longer worried about security issue like in the US."

2) Kigali cleanest city in Africa

A recent report by CNN: "Kigali's clean vision for the future" is explaining why dirtiness does not need to be necessarily associated with poverty. It is a question of culture and sensitizing the population to it. It is also about country leaders and authority participating in the process. Here is another report from the Chinese CCTV about Kigali being the cleanest and safest city in Africa.

3) Rwanda tops Africa in broadband speed

Rwanda has the fastest broadband Internet in Africa, according to latest statistics from Ookla’s NetIndex, overtaking Ghana. Based on millions of recent test results from Speedtest.net, this index compares and ranks consumer download speeds around the globe. The value is the rolling mean throughput in Mbps over the past 30 days where the mean distance between the client and the server is less than 300 miles. The average download speed in Rwanda is 6.29 Mbps, the fastest in Africa. This does not describe the global download speed, but only the local speed (within 300 km). This is probably due to the fact that Rwanda has one of the densest optical networks in Africa, over 3,000 km of optical fiber in a country not larger than 300 km.

4) Kigali in the top 10 most liveable cities in Africa

In an Africa.com blog posting, Kigali is ranked tenth most liveable city in Africa in a ranking headed as expected by Cape Town. A good city development master plan and road constructions have made Kigali a well organized city with very little traffic congestion, especially compared to its neighboring capitals like Nairobi, Kampala or Dar es Salaam where I spent hours in traffic jams with the taxi sometimes barely moving more than 1 km in one hour. In addition to 4-5 stars hotel like the Serena Hotel or the upcoming new Marriott hotel, Kigali also offers nice boutique hotels like the Inside Africa ranked in the best boutique hotels in Africa.

I hope you enjoy this posting and that someday I'll meet you in Kigali the safest, cleanest, fastest and more liveable city in Africa.

Seeya later alligator....