KIGALI, April 25 (Xinhua) -- It used to take Sperata Nyirahabinshuti three hours to travel from her home in Huye, a town in southern Rwanda, to Nyaruguru, a district where Kibeho, a holy site, is located.
Now, thanks to a road built by a Chinese firm, she can reach there in only 40 minutes and join thousands of other pilgrims heading for Kibeho every year.
The upgrading of the 66 kilometer Huye-Nyaruguru road, which cuts through Kibeho-Ndago, Ndago-Munini, Ndago-Ngoma and Kibeho urban roads, started in 2019.
The project, contracted to China's Sinohydro Corporation Ltd, will become fully operational next October, several months later than the originally scheduled April, due to a suspension of work during the COVID-19 outbreak.
The road, now mostly completed, has brought hope to residents like Nyirahabinshuti for a more prosperous future.
"Movement was not easy due to the poor state of the road," she recalled. "Nyaruguru district was almost cut off."
The bad condition of the old road also led to many accidents, and when it rained, the road became barely passable, Nyirahabinshuti said.
"But now I'm excited about the new road," said the 30-year-old office worker.
The road cuts through one town, Kibeho, and several villages, the largest of which are Ndago, Ngoma and Munini.
In the past, these villages were shunned by motorists due to the poor road network, said another area resident, Benjamin Niyibizi.
"Moving from Huye to Kibeho using public transport was almost impossible. A lot of time was wasted on the way and you could reach there with a lot of fatigue," he said.
"We had only one or two public transport buses plying the route, but now every 30 minutes there is a bus heading to Kibeho from Huye and vice versa, following the upgrading of the road," said Niyibizi, who is in his 30s and runs a small business of his own.
"It is a huge transformation," he said, adding that the new road has greatly increased traffic, where every five minutes there is a vehicle passing.
"It was not like this before. It has changed for the better," Niyibizi said.
Businesses and farmers can now easily transport their products to market centers, leading to improvement in people's livelihoods, he said.
Francois Usabyimana has worked as a surveyor with the Chinese contractor for two years since completing his civil engineering course.
"This road has brought new life to the villages and promises prosperity to the communities here," he said. "Reaching market centers was difficult, but it has been eased for producers of different products."
Rwandan officials say that the road promotes the export of high mountain tea from Southern Province, the main production area of the cash crop, and boosts the overall economy of the region.
The contract to design and upgrade the Huye-Kibeho-Ngoma/Munini road to asphalt concrete standard was signed in 2016 between Rwanda Transport Development Agency and Sinohydro.
The road was originally scheduled for completion in April, but was delayed because of COVID-19 restrictions.
"We halted work from March to May in 2020," Yao Zheng, the project's manager, said.
Sinohydro has since added more equipment and human resources to accelerate the project's work, with a new completion date set for October, he said.
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