The history of rail transport in Rwanda is limited to three industrial railways, and a number of proposed railway projects that, as of 2012, had not been implemented.
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Industrial railways
Rwanda has only ever had three 600 mm (1 ft 11 5⁄8 in) narrow gauge industrial railways. None of them has never offered passenger services.
The industrial railways were operated initially by:
Until 1988, all three of these businesses were united as the Régie d’Exploitation et de Développement des Mines (RÉDEMI), which also operated the three railways. However, in the ensuing 20 years the railways were severely damaged by the Rwandan Civil War and Rwandan Genocide. It may well be that they are no longer in operation.
Proposed railways
Since around the turn of the 21st century, there have been several proposals for a railway between Rwanda and neighbouring countries. The existing railway networks in nearby Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania use 1,000 mm (3 ft 3 3⁄8 in) metre gauge, but TAZARA and other nearby countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) use the 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge, leading to some potential difficulties.
As early as the 1980s, the Kagera Basin Organization carried out economic feasibility studies into a would-be KBO railway system linking Burundi, Rwanda and the DRC, but that proposed system never came to fruition.
In 2000, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) launched the Great Lakes railway project involving both rail and water transport on Lakes Tanganyika, Kivu, and Edward connecting Burundi, the DRC, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia. The aim of that project was to improve connections between the Great Lakes and the southern African 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge rail network. COMESA commissioned a South African engineering firm, Makhosi Holdings, to carry out a feasibility study into several Great Lakes railway project routes agreed by COMESA members.
Simultaneously, another team of South African engineers was engaged by COMESA to undertake a feasibility study for an alternative rail link in Rwanda, running 150 kilometres (93 mi) southeast from Kigali to Isaka, where it would have connected with the existing metre gauge Tanzanian railway network. As with the would-be KBO railway system, however, the COMESA proposals were not implemented.
By 2004, the newly founded Northern Corridor Transit Coordination Authority, based in Mombasa, Kenya, was promoting a project to link Kisangani with Mombasa using a new line from Kasese to Kisangani, with feeder lines linking Kasese with Goma and then via Bukavu to Kigali and Bujumbura. Two years later, at a meeting in August 2006 with members of the Rwanda Patriotic Front, Wu Guanzheng, of the Communist Party of China, confirmed the intention of the People's Republic of China to fund a study into the feasibility of constructing a railway connecting with the Tanzanian railway network at Isaka, and running via Kigali in Rwanda through to Burundi.