cowi uk volunteers set to transform the kigarama-musabike community

PRESS RELEASE: Volunteers from COWI UK and Wilkinson Eyre architects will work with members of the community to build a 43m span suspension bridge to provide safe, year-round access across the Sebeya.

14.11.2018

The residents of the Kigarama-Musabike community farm tea, beans, maize, and sweet potatoes. They rely on selling their goods at market to provide for their families.

When the Sebeya river is impassable (roughly 45 days of the year) residents become isolated from the market and nearest health centres, students cannot attend school, and tea plantation workers cannot safely get to work. Isolation is a root cause of poverty and Bridges to Prosperity works with local communities, corporate partners and foundations to build footbridges to connect communities to education, health care and economic opportunity. The bridge is located directly in front of a primary school and will provide students will year round safe access to the school.

This is the fifth B2P project that COWI UK has been involved in, and our volunteers are very excited to get stuck in!

The COWI team is made up of 5 volunteers - Oliver Stross, Clotilde Robin, Balint Penzes, Margherita Perona and Fernando Madrazo-Aguirre. They will be joined by 4 volunteers from Wilkinson Eyre, and together with the Kigarama-Musabike community they will build a 43m span suspension bridge to provide safe, year-round access across the Sebeya. By providing reliable access to critical services, the bridge will transform not only the communities’ pedestrian routes, but also their potential to thrive.

The team will travel to Kazabe in the North West of Rwanda on 23 November and will have just 2 weeks to complete the bridge build, including erection of the towers, and construction of cables and deck of the bridge.

The whole project is self-funded. While COWI UK and Wilkinson Eyre cover the cost of construction materials, the team must raise £9000 to cover all other costs associated with the project.If you would like to make a donation, please go to 

Progress and photos of the build will be posted on the Kazabe Twitter and LinkedIn sites, as well as on the COWI Social Media sites.