From 27 to 28 August, the Rwanda Information Society Authority (RISA), in collaboration with Cenfri, the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR), and Smart Africa, convened a two-day workshop on Rwanda’s Shared Government Data Hub.

Opening the workshop, RISA’s Chief Technology Officer highlighted that the discussions will focus on strengthening how data is shared across government institutions and supporting the implementation of the National Data Sharing Policy. He emphasized the importance of establishing a coordinated approach that enables institutions to securely and effectively share data while maintaining appropriate ownership and governance arrangements.

The workshop brought together key stakeholders, including the Ministry of ICT and Innovation (MINICT), the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR), Sector Chief Digital Officers, Use Case owners, and the DPI Centre, to build a shared understanding of the Data Hub’s scope, architecture, institutional roles and expected deliverables.

Rwanda’s public institutions currently operate more than 280 information systems, collectively holding over 1,000 terabytes of data. Much of this data remains siloed across institutions and sectors. The National Data Hub is designed to address this fragmentation by enabling secure, standardised and interoperable data sharing, while allowing institutions to retain ownership of their data in line with the National Data Sharing Policy.

The Data Hub will be supported by two core components: a Data Sharing Platform, which is already being used as an interim solution to support data governance, discoverability and access through an open data portal and metadata catalogue; and a Data Interoperability Platform, which will enable real-time, transactional data exchange between institutional systems.

As Rwanda prepares to enter the implementation phase of the Data Hub, the workshop provided an opportunity for stakeholders to assess institutional readiness, identify governance, infrastructure and data gaps, and align on roles and responsibilities.

The first day focused on Rwanda’s data-sharing policy landscape, the current state of institutional data systems and the proposed Data Hub architecture. On the second day, participants examined institutional use cases, with particular focus on the three pilot sectors which are Justice, Trade and Education and agreed on next steps and follow-up actions to inform the pre-implementation plan.

By bringing stakeholders together at an early stage, RISA is helping establish a common foundation for the National Data Hub and supporting a coordinated approach to secure, interoperable and effective data sharing across government.