Rwanda

In Rwanda, Pact is helping to improve lives by strengthening the country’s ability to respond to HIV and AIDS. We have also provided vital support to the country's many artisanal and small-scale miners who rely on mining to earn a living. Read more below.

Rwanda has become an important model for economic growth in central Africa, with mineral resources making a critical contribution to this growth. Recognizing the potential for a responsible, regulated mining sector to deliver social development and improved governance, Pact and its partners have helped resource-dependent communities to organize their activities and develop dependable sources of income.

For more than a decade in Rwanda, Pact led field implementation of ITSCI, the International Tin Association’s tin supply chain initiative. ITSCI is the region’s only internationally accepted, operational due diligence mechanism and mineral traceability system for the 3T minerals: tungsten, tin and tantalum. This allowed tens of thousands of miners in central Africa to earn a dignified living and build a better future for themselves and their families. In 2023, Pact transitioned its role in ITSCI to local management.

Through our Illuminating Small-Scale Mining program, we have worked to address key market system failures that leave many of Rwanda’s approximately 57,000 ASM workers without affordable and appropriate lighting needed to work below and above ground safely and productively.

Pact and its partners are also working to reach and sustain HIV epidemic control among pregnant and breastfeeding women, adolescents, infants and children in Rwanda through the ACHIEVE project.