With more than 13 million people, Rwanda has the second largest population density in Sub-Saharan Africa, putting enormous pressure on the country’s resources, its land usage, and management. Since the 1994 genocide, the country has implemented strategies to rehabilitate and stabilize the economy, resulting in overall socio-economic progress; the country has one of the fastest growing economies in Africa, with an average GDP growth rate of more than 7% and life expectancy improving by more than 33% since 2000. Rwanda is now striving to become one of the fastest growing economies in Africa, and with its Vision 2050 plan, the country aims to transition into a high-income country within the next 25 years. A key component of this strategy is to develop urban areas, which by 2050 are expected to house 70% of the population. Materials as pedestrian as sand, gravel, and crushed stones are a key to that, but also among the most underappreciated resources on the planet. Collectively referred to as ‘aggregates’, they are important construction materials, including concrete, asphalt and glass. Extracting these materials in low- and middle-income countries is often done through manual labor using simple tools like shovels and plastic jerrycans. Throughout the entire Sub-Saharan continent, increasing demand for these resources, due to rapid population growth and urbanization, means that aggregates are often extracted without regulations, using unsustainable methods. With an annual population growth of more than 2% and the ambitious aims to modernize the country, Rwanda’s limited resources are experiencing enormous pressure. Using Rwanda as an example, this photo essay documents the central place of these materials within the development plan and reveal a critical disjunction: extraction activities offer a livelihood for low-income people and provide some necessary materials for them, but the main effort is to create high-end housing and more formal housing in the countries’ richest areas.
Figure 1. Photo taken by: Mette Bendixen, June 2023. The eco-friendly Kigali Convention Centre was finished in 2016 and remains the most expensive building in Africa. It serves as proof that Rwanda has made great strides to recover both socially and economically from the 1994 genocide. Occupying a central position in the city and adorned with yellow, blue, and green LED-lights resembling the national flag, the German-designed building lights up at night as a testament to the country's hopes for a prosperous future. ‘Umuganda’ means ‘coming together in purpose’ in the local language Kinyarwanda, and is the word used to describe the national holiday, where people are required to clean the streets in the morning of the first Sunday of the month. The holiday was established in 2009 by President Kagame, who has been in power since the genocide. Sand, gravel and crushed stones are critical building blocks in the country’s stride to modernize, not only through the construction of impressive architectural designs, but also towards housing the growing population.
Figure 2. Photo taken by: Mette Bendixen, June 2023. With the country’s hilly and mountainous landscape, Rwanda is referred to as ‘The Land of the Thousand Hills’, with land being intensely used from the lowlands to the mountain tops. The extraction of sediment often occurs in smaller rivers, at times in designated mining spots, where the extraction of other types of minerals have been granted. An example of a heavily mined area, which dates back more than 100 years, is around the Rutongo Mines, in Rwanda’s Northern Province, around 25 km north of the capital Kigali. Favorable geological conditions have developed quartz veins rich in cassiterite (tin). The Rutongo Mines consist of 6 underground mines and was in 2023 responsible for a quarter of Rwanda’s mineral production with the mined material predominantly being tin. While ample amounts of sand, gravel, and stones are available in the area, their value is significantly smaller and is only considered a biproduct, yet the material is of key importance to locals, as many are informally involved in the industry as a main source of income.
Figure 3. Photo taken by: Mette Bendixen, June 2023. In the Nyabogogo River, with close proximity to Kigali, sand has been extracted for the past decade. The river runs through heavily farmed areas dominated by rice paddies. The country’s fertile soil plays a critical role as nearly one third of the GDP comes from agriculture, with smallholder farmers being the main actors. The extraction activities are carried out by men, spanning the ages from teenagers to men in their 40s. The men enter the river and stand in the water to levels reaching the hip and dig the sand out directly from the riverbed. The sand’s first point of contact with solid ground is when it is deposited on a man-made loading dock adjacent to the riverbank.
Figure 4. Photo taken by: Mette Bendixen, June 2024. Point bars located along the meandering river consist of deposits of sediments of varying grain sizes. While these bars may be vegetated, large parts are often bare, exposing the sediment, and allowing for easy extraction. In the image, two young men from a rural area in the Northern Province had received an order from a local homeowner for two bags of sand. The young men were offered a few coins for the task, and the homeowner would receive material for maintenance or construction of their house.
Figure 5. Photo taken by: Mette Bendixen, June 2023. Along deeper rivers (around 1 m depth), man-made platforms are established along the riverbank to offer a loading point. After having been dug up from the riverbed, the sand is first loaded onto the slightly elevated platform, and at a later time moved into piles adjacent to the riverbank, where a dump truck has access for filling. On the right side of the river in Image 5, clear riverbank erosion is evident and is one of the most commonly occurring consequences of river-mining. While bamboo has been planted within the last decade to mitigate some of the effects of mining, with these intense mining activities taking place, the effects of the planted vegetation cannot keep pace with the erosion, resulting in riverbank collapse. This is one of the most commonly observed consequences for the natural environment, documented across both smaller rivers on the Sub-Saharan continent as well as larger rivers.
Figure 6. Photo taken by: Mette Bendixen, July 2024. Extensive measures have been taken to support the riverbank from erosion at this site located just a few hundred metres off a main road. While the platform serves as loading dock, it simultaneously protects the banks from collapsing and eroding. From here, the sand is then moved into larger piles one step up, visible in the center of the picture, ready to be loaded onto trucks. Just a few minutes after this photo was taken in July 2024, a 5m2-capacity dump truck drove down from the nearby main road, and more than half a dozen men started running towards the area, each of them equipped with a shovel ready to load the small dump truck and earn a little cash.
Figure 7. Photo taken by: Ke Huang, June 2022. The mining of aggregates takes place throughout large parts of the country both in rivers and on land, but the majority of the mining is found in small rivers and in their tributaries, often with extraction occurring immediately next to farm fields. In the image, numerous piles are seen both in the outer part and closer to the photographer. To the left, a woman is farming in the fields immediately adjacent to the mining and demonstrates how the extraction is a delicate act of balance, when occurring within farm fields.
Figure 8. Photo taken by: Mette Bendixen, July 2024. Piles of sand are deposited in the immediate vicinity of the small streams. Tire tracks are fresh, indicating a truck has recently driven the 50m distance on the narrow tight path from the main road to allow the miners to throw the material into the dump truck directly from the piles.
Figure 9. Photo taken by: Ke Huang, June 2022. Piles are either scooped into a truck, or if truck access is not possible, or if only smaller amounts of material is needed, the sediment is loaded into heavy-duty bags, which can be carried by a single person. These bags easily weigh over 30 kilos and are carried on the head.
Figure 10. Photo taken by: Mette Bendixen, July 2023. The larger Nyabogogo River is intensely mined throughout parts of its course near Kigali. Piles of sand and gravel are loaded alongside or near the riverbank to ensure the material is readily available for pick-up by a truck. This particular site was visited several times during the field campaigns in 2023 and 2024 and the number of piles varied greatly on a day-by-day basis, depending on buyer demand.
Figure 11. Photo taken by: Mette Bendixen, June 2024. Along a wide, but shallow tributary to the Mukuwunga River, located at the border between the Northern and the Western Province, are areas where vast amounts of sand is extracted. The shallow nature of the river allows for easy extraction, and here the man-made platforms are supported by plastic bags, further reinforcing the structure. The intense land use throughout large parts of the country and the associated conflicts are seen in this picture: banana palm trees located adjacent to the river at the foot of the hill are being buried by the sand piles deposited by the miners.
Figure 12. Photo taken by: Mette Bendixen, July 2023. As the extracted material gets offloaded near the river, it may undergo sieving at the site, allowing the miners to offer a variety of grain sizes depending on the demand.
Figure 13. Photo taken by: Mette Bendixen, July 2023. The previous photos showed one form of sediment extraction, with ‘sand’ grain size as central to the activity. Along the Rusine River, a tributary to the larger Nyabogogo River, various grain sizes are simultaneously extracted, and here women play a role. Women are involved carrying stones from the river where the crushing takes place, whereas for sand extraction, only men are involved. The job of crushing stone, a time-consuming process, is predominantly led by female miners, who often sit together in groups ranging from a few to more than a dozen women. As women are most often the main family-care providers, many children are wandering around the site, or, if too young to walk, sit next to the mother, or are carried on the back of the women as they crush stone.
Figure 14. Photo taken by: Mette Bendixen, July 2023. Each individual woman is responsible for crushing her own pile. The crushing takes place on the ground. The women sit with an elevated stone in between their legs, which serves as a platform for crushing. In an efficient process, the woman picks a stone from the pile, places it on the platform and starts crushing, either with a hammer or by using a larger stone. Once broken into several smaller sizes of desired size, she brushes the aggregates into a pile adjacent to the platform, which is then cleared and ready for a new stone to be crushed. The entire process of crushing a single stone takes less than 30 seconds. Most often, no protective gear is used, and pieces of crushed material fly around, making the work dangerous and the miners susceptible to diseases and injuries in lungs, eyes, and on the skin. For a single woman, a sufficient quantity of crushed stones for selling is reached after two weeks of crushing, offering her $20 USD, coming to an average daily salary of less than $1.50 - The World Bank classifies anyone living under $2.15 (2017 levels) as living in extreme poverty.
Figure 15. Photo taken by: Mette Bendixen, June 2023. Dump trucks that can hold 5m2 or 25m2 back down from the main road, often through narrow, barely accessible paths to get as close as possible to the piles awaiting transportation. Visible to the right in the image are miners, who rush from nearby areas towards the piles, if they are not already actively mining, once they spot the truck arriving. And the loading process can begin. The truck driver usually does not participate in the loading process but waits for the men to load the material, before he takes off. With the work of a handful of men, a 5m2 truck can be loaded in less than a half an hour.
Figure 16, Upper and lower left. Figure 16, Upper right. Figure 16, Lower right. Photos taken by: Mette Bendixen, June 2023 and 2024. In rural areas, large organic-rich bricks coated with a cement-like layer for protection, constitute the main type of building material for low-income residents. Here, clay and sand are key ingredients, and the added coat of cement-like material containing sand protects the volatile building blocks, which otherwise are easily eroded during intense rain.
Figure 17. Photos taken by: Mette Bendixen, June 2023. In April and May of 2023, the northwestern part of the country experienced historic rain events, which caused severe flooding and landslides in many areas. 130 lives were lost, more than 20,000 people displaced and thousands of volatile houses were destroyed. The bottom right image shows how the organic-rich bricks are placed on the ground to dry, and how the rain has destroyed and washed away many of these building blocks.
Figure 18. Photos taken by: Mette Bendixen, June 2023 and 2024. Travelling throughout the country, piles of sand and stones are commonly observed deposited and readily available for usage in front of homes. At times, the pile will become somewhat vegetated, indicating it hasn’t been used in a while.
Figure 19. Photo taken by: Mette Bendixen, July 2024. Modern apartment complexes are built as a part of the Integrated Development Program (IDP) Model Villages, a public housing program initiated by Rwanda’s Housing Authority, to offer housing for displaced people. Also here, in the Karama IDP, a pile of sand is offloaded at a parking lot, available for use.
Figure 20. Photo taken by: Mette Bendixen, July 2023. In the city center, houses and apartments are more often built using classic bricks and mortar techniques. Mortar is made up of a mixture between sand, a binding material, and water.
Figure 21. Photos taken by: Mette Bendixen, July 2024 Increased risk of landslides along the country’s many hillsides, which may be reinforced by mining activities, have prompted the state to initiate the construction of large housing complexes in larger cities. Here, sand is a critical resource offering housing for the displaced people. While men dominate the workforce in this construction, women are also involved carrying materials or controlling access to the construction site.
Figure 22, Left image, Kigali City Province. Figure 22, Two right images. Photos taken by: Mette Bendixen, July 2023. Piles of stones are awaiting transport near a mining site (left image). The end-use is often high-end types of construction such as hotels or luxury real estate, which use these materials for decoration around the property (right image).
Figure 23, Left image. Figure 23, Right image. Photos taken by: Mette Bendixen, July 2024. Situated between the tourist-friendly ‘Kigali Car Free Zone’, high-end hotels, embassies and banks, and the Kigali City Hall, is a large site in which a building with many stories is under construction (left image). The pedestrian-only street offers the iconic ‘KIGALI’ sign, tourist shops, bars and restaurants, and a view to the city’s modern glass architecture and high-rise buildings (right image).
Figure 24, Left image. Figure 24, Right image. Photos taken by: Mette Bendixen, June and July 2024. A key driver of the country’s future growth is the objective that has more than 2/3 of the country’s residents living in urban areas in 2050. The country’s Vision 2050 plan specifically includes the goal of having a formal housing sector by 2050, available and accessible to the entire population. However, this ambitious plan does not include any discussion of the sand, gravel and crushed stone essential for reaching this goal. Vision City is a four-phase building process, initiated by the Rwanda Social Security Board to offer housing for more than 22,000 people. In 2013, the first phase was initiated after having relocated more than 3,000 low-income people living on the land, of which some were forcibly removed. Today, it is an area which offers 500 units for high-income people in a gated community which includes a private school (left image). Vision City Phase II is yet to be built, but an advertisement at the Kigali airport displays ‘Why not make this your home?’ (right image).
Figure 25, Upper images. Figure 25, Lower images. Photos taken by: Mette Bendixen, July 2024.
Upper images: Vision City offers bright, air-conditioned homes with fenced, manicured gardens and two-car garages, neatly constructed in straight lines along clean, paved roads. With guards patrolling around the entry gates and ample LED-streetlights, Vision City is a securitized area for the wealthy. The green lowlands separate Vision City on one hillside, from the opposing informal housing on the other. Here, a young man was relaxing by a local well, where residents gathered to wash newly caught fish, clothes, or access drinking water, explained that, while being well aware the area was closed property to him, Vision City was a sign of the country’s development. Across the country, it is evident that sand, gravel, and crushed stones are crucial for pursuing the ambitious national economic and development goals and meeting the growing need in particularly urban areas. However, the extraction of the material becomes an unsustainable livelihood strategy unlikely to lift people out of poverty, particularly when the material goes into regions not benefitting the miners themselves and destroying agricultural land. This apparent paradox must be acknowledged when striving to create a robust future for the country. Across the Sub-Saharan continent, few countries have developed policies and regulations around sand extraction, which should serve as efforts towards regulating and monitoring to balance socio-ecological concerns with the need for offering adequate housing. Rwanda needs to include all voices when aspiring towards an inclusive, just, and prosperous future for the country. As researchers, we need to thoroughly understand the intertwined nuances that exist within this granular material.