Rwanda
Tools
Tasks
Users
Scope
Training
Regulation
Insights
Information uploaded as at September 2026
AT A GLANCE
Rwanda is increasingly integrating AI across law enforcement and the courts, with emerging use by prosecutors. The government has partnered with various private-sector entities and the United Nations Development Programme to leverage AI tools that boost efficiency and promote accessibility to the judicial system. Several technologies are currently under development and are expected to launch in the near future. The National AI Policy, the first of its kind on the African continent, provides a roadmap for Rwanda to harness the benefits of AI to achieve its development goals.
There is no national law expressly regulating the use of AI in criminal proceedings; instead, existing general frameworks apply, including data protection and privacy laws, cybersecurity frameworks, and constitutional protections of fundamental rights, alongside emerging national policies and guidelines on AI and data governance.
USE
Rwanda is a unitary state with a centralised justice system, in which criminal justice is administered through national institutions under the authority of the central government rather than devolved regional structures. For the purpose of this entry, the centralised adoption of AI in criminal proceedings is addressed.
Law enforcement
As at September 2026, Rwandan law enforcement agencies are increasingly making use of AI, primarily for operational support and data review and analysis.
As part of its Strategic Plan for 2018–2023, the Rwanda National Police identified as a strategic objective the development of an integrated Rwanda National Police intelligence-led operational framework for preventing terrorism, enemy networks, cybercrimes, transnational crimes, and human trafficking. Moreover, in a press release dated 15 May 2025, the Rwanda National Police confirmed that technology has become central to the country’s policing strategy through use of tools such as drones and cameras in key zones and cyber-monitoring units.
Operational support
In Kigali and near Rwanda’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, emergency help buttons are installed on large poles, allowing individuals to contact the police directly. When activated, an officer can respond in real time and communicate with the caller. The officer can then remotely control a surveillance pole that scans the area and follows individuals on the ground, enabling basic questioning and incident reporting while avoiding direct confrontation. These systems are monitored from two control centres, one within the city and another at headquarters, and their technology includes facial recognition capabilities. The systems are reported to have assisted in emergencies.
Predictive analytics
The Rwanda National Police has confirmed that its policing approaches integrate predictive analytical techniques and tools including network analysis, Geographical Information System (‘GIS’), Global Positioning System (‘GPS’), crime mapping, biometrics, fingerprints, DNA research, facial recognition, social media policing, and CCTV.
Digital payments are a significant part of Rwanda’s economy and so cybercrime monitoring is heavily integrated into the financial sector. The Financial Intelligence Centre, alongside the National Cyber Security Authority (‘NCSA’), works with banking networks using automated machine-learning models to flag suspicious transaction patterns. This acts as a trigger mechanism for the Rwanda Investigation Bureau to launch criminal investigations into money laundering and cyber fraud.
In July 2025, Airtel Rwanda unveiled a Spam Alert Service, an AI-powered tool designed to identify high-risk patterns and flag suspicious messages, incentivising users to verify the information before taking any action. The tool was developed in collaboration with Rwandan security agencies, including the Investigation Bureau and the NCSA.
People have reported receiving calls that sound exactly like their own family members. Same voice, same tone. They didn’t realise it was a deepfake. That’s why we’re investing in AI. Prevention is key, but awareness is the first defence.
AI is not replacing professional judgment; it is supporting it. The integrity of crime scene investigations depends on striking the right balance between technological innovation and ethical responsibility.
This [IST Legal] system helps legal professionals work more efficiently. Just input the legal issue, and the system recommends potential legal remedies based on current Rwandan law.
Legal research, analysis and drafting support
The AI integration described above, developed by IST Legal, aims to assist court staff with legal research.
Defence
As at September 2026, there are no specific AI tools developed for defence counsel in Rwanda. However, lawyers may use AI legal research platforms available in the jurisdiction, including AiLex Rwanda, Wansom, and Mbaza Ubutabera AI (discussed below).
Victims
Under the Criminal Procedure Code (2019), victims have standing in the criminal process in Rwanda. Investigators and prosecutors must inform victims of their right to claim damages, and the Code allows victims to participate in criminal proceedings and to seek compensation. Their standing is outlined in the following provisions:
- Article 10: Victims may institute civil claims.
- Article 23: Victims may prosecute before the court as prescribed by law.
- Article 118: Victims of an offence may initiate criminal proceedings by way of private prosecution.
Legal research, analysis, and drafting support
Mbaza Ubutabera AI is a mobile tool designed to help everyday people understand Rwandan law. By typing in a personal situation or a legal question, users receive plain-language explanations and direct references to relevant legal articles sourced from the official Rwandan laws portal.
The Ministry of Justice is also reportedly developing an AI-powered mobile application that increases accessibility to legal texts and case law. The application, a centralised platform for accessing the Constitution, laws, regulations, and court decisions, will answer legal queries and include features that simplify legal jargon. Its launch was scheduled for 2026, but as at September 2026 the application has not yet been released.
TRAINING
There is currently no mandatory or systematic training on the responsible use of AI for legal professionals. Nor is there mandatory training on deepfake detection for legal professionals, police forces, prosecutors, or judges. However, in its National AI Policy (discussed below) the Ministry of ICT and Innovation (‘MINICT’)—the body responsible for driving national digital transformation—identified as a priority area the development of ‘a capacity building program[me] on the use of AI in [the] public sector’.
Moreover, various ad hoc initiatives aimed at increasing awareness of the role of AI in legal proceedings, have taken place. For example:
- In September 2023, Rwanda hosted a national workshop to advance the implementation of the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI (2021) in Rwanda. It was addressed to key national stakeholders, and included discussions on ethics surrounding AI and discrimination.
- In April 2025, UNESCO and Rwanda’s Ministry of Justice convened a national workshop on AI, data protection, and the rule of law. Thirty-one legal professionals, including judges, prosecutors, academics, lawyers, and judicial operators from Rwanda were introduced to the challenges, principles, regulations, and relevant case law applicable to the use of AI.
- In March 2026, Rwanda’s MINICT concluded a multi-day AI Trust and Safety Workshop, delivered in partnership with UNDP Rwanda and the High Commission of Canada, to strengthen the responsible, ethical, and accountable use of AI in the country’s judiciary.
- The Musanze-based National Police College (‘NPC’) has also introduced information security into its curriculum, with officers and civil servants trained regularly in cyber awareness.
REGULATION
As at September 2026, there is no general legislation on the use of AI in Rwanda. Instead, Rwanda’s AI framework has developed through the broader system of laws, including data protection and cybersecurity laws, criminal procedure rules, and policy documents.
AI Regulations
On 20 April 2023, the Cabinet of Rwanda approved the National AI Policy, which sets out an ethical and inclusive framework built on five core principles: beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, justice, and explicability (sometimes expressed as transparency). The policy requires that all AI systems comply with Rwanda’s Data Protection and Privacy Law (Law No. 058/2021 of 2021), and it authorises the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (‘RURA’) to take action against systems that breach ethical AI guidelines. Although the policy itself is a strategic guidance document rather than primary legislation, it creates the mandate for subsequent binding regulations and sector-specific implementation guidelines across healthcare, agriculture, education, financial services and transportation.
Key institutions involved in the regulation and governance of AI under this policy include:
- RURA: handles technical regulation of ICT and utilities, including licensing, standard-setting and consumer protection;
- NCSA: enforces data protection and privacy laws with powers to audit, investigate and impose administrative fines; and
- Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Rwanda (‘C4IR’): functions as a policy experimentation and innovation hub, supporting regulatory sandboxes and providing technical advisory services on emerging AI technologies.
The UNDP Policy Brief Assessing Rwanda’s Potential in AI and Innovation identifies considerable inclusion and ethical risks that must be addressed to ensure that AI is deployed in an ethical manner. It points to factors such as rural-urban disparities in internet access, gender gaps in technology adoption, and limited affordability of devices and data that may exclude vulnerable populations from accessing AI. The Policy Brief further highlights ethical risks such as risk of bias, lack of transparent decision-making, and cybersecurity threats as potential challenges to the equitable deployment of AI.
Guidelines for practitioners
Rwanda’s legal profession is governed by Law No. 83/2013 of 2013 (amending Law No. 03/97). This Law establishes the Bar Association in Rwanda, which subjects advocates to a professional code of conduct. Cases concerning violations of legal ethics are regulated by the Internal Rules and Regulations of the Rwanda Bar Association (Section 6: Ethics and Ethics of the Advocate), imposing, among others, the following duties: to handle the client’s file without negligence; to handle the client’s information confidentially; to maintain professional secrecy; and to pursue continued training.
The Rules should apply to legal practitioners making use of AI tools. For example, they oblige legal practitioners to check AI-generated outputs and ensure that they undertake independent efforts to undergo continued training. Legal practitioners must also ensure that they use secure AI tools to avoid breaching client confidentiality or professional secrecy rules. As at September 2026, the Rwanda Bar Association has not published official guidelines on the use of AI by legal practitioners.
Moreover, practitioners developing or deploying AI systems in Rwanda are expected to align with the ethical principles set out in the National AI Policy and to ensure compliance with the Data Protection and Privacy Law (Law No. 058/2021 of 2021), including obligations around lawful processing, informed consent, data subject rights, and data protection impact assessments for high-risk AI projects. Practitioners should also follow the NCSA’s guidance on key processing principles, data subject rights (including the rights to object, to portability, to rectification and erasure), and the appointment of data protection officers.
In 2025, UNESCO published the Guidelines for the Use of AI Systems in Courts and Tribunals (2025). Rwanda has not formally adopted these guidelines, though they may inform the judiciary’s understanding of AI best practices.
Criminal procedure rules
As at September 2026, Rwanda’s criminal procedure rules and the rules on the admission of evidence have not been updated to account for AI tools, nor have they adopted any explicit rules on deepfake evidence. However, existing rules may extend to govern these issues.
Law Nº 027/2019 Relating to the Criminal Procedure (2019)
Rwanda’s criminal procedure is governed by Law No. 027/2019 of 2019 (as amended by Law No. 058/2023 of 2023). These criminal procedure rules contain no AI-specific procedural rules but they are relevant insofar as they regulate the collection, preservation, production and use of electronic evidence and introduce explicit provisions for electronic surveillance of suspects or accused persons (Law No. 027/2019: Titles 2 & 3 (Articles 19, 55-57, 60, 107-111); Law Nº 058/2023: Article 8).
Law Nº 62/2024 Governing Evidence (2024)
Law Nº 62/2024 of 2024 applies across criminal, as well as broader legal proceedings, setting the rules on the means, admissibility, and presumptions concerning evidence. It recognises oral, expert, and electronic evidence, which must be verified and authenticated before admission. AI-generated materials will likely be assessed against the rules applying to digital and electronic evidence, set out in Section 2 (Scientific and Digital Evidence) (Articles 34–49).
Deepfakes
Article 34 of the Cybercrimes Act (Law No. 60/2018), when read with Article 143 of the Penal Code (Law No. 1/2012), criminalises the unauthorised creation or distribution of sexually explicit or manipulated images created using AI.
Data protection legislation
Law No. 058/2021 Relating to the Protection of Personal Data and Privacy (2021)
Rwanda’s primary data protection statute is Law No. 058/2021 (‘DPP Law’), issued in 2021 and becoming fully enforceable on 15 October 2023 after a two-year transitional period. The law closely mirrors the EU General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’), and applies to controllers and processors established in Rwanda as well as to those located outside who process the personal data of individuals located in Rwanda. It establishes principles of lawfulness, fairness, transparency, purpose limitation, accuracy, security, and grants data subjects rights of access, rectification, erasure, portability, and objection to automated decision-making (e.g., to seek human intervention) (Chapter 3, Articles 18-26; Chapter 6, Articles 45-47). It also recognises the consent and the legal bases for data use and imposes restrictions on cross-border transfers of personal data. While it does not expressly mention AI, the law will likely apply to AI systems that process personal data. For example, sensitive data (biometrics, criminal records) are specially protected, which limits unregulated use of biometric AI tools in investigations or court proceedings.
The DPP Law designates the NCSA as the supervisory authority for data protection. On 31 March 2022, the NCSA officially launched the Data Protection and Privacy Office (‘DPO’), responsible for governing compliance with the DPP Law. Through the DPO, the NCSA registers and certifies data controllers and processors, receives breach notifications (within 48 hours), authorises cross‑border data transfers, issues guidance and training, and enforces compliance with administrative and criminal sanctions, while guaranteeing individuals’ privacy rights.
Cybersecurity laws
Law No. 60/2018 on the Prevention and Punishment of Cybercrimes (2018)
Rwanda treats cybersecurity as part of broader technology governance rather than as an AI-specific domain, with cybersecurity obligations arising mainly through data protection, evidence integrity, and secure criminal-justice systems. The key cybersecurity statute is Law No. 60/2018, which criminalises hacking, unauthorised access to computer systems, data interference, and related offences that may be facilitated by or target AI systems (Chapter 4, Articles 16-40 ). It also imposes obligations on covered service providers to take reasonable steps to inform affected individuals of cybercrimes that might affect them and take steps to notify the NCSA in certain cases (Chapter 2, Articles 4-7 ). The NCSA has been reportedly collaborating with judges, prosecutors, investigators, and lawyers to ensure that they have the capacity to handle cybercrime investigations, manage digital evidence, and conduct digital forensics.
Human rights
The Constitution of Rwanda (revised in 2015 and in 2023) enshrines fundamental rights that could be construed to limit AI use in criminal proceedings. These include the right to privacy (Article 23), the right to liberty and security of the person (Article 24), and the right to due process of law (Article 29), including fair trial guarantees such as the right to defence, the presumption of innocence, and the right to challenge evidence. Any use of AI in Rwanda’s criminal justice system must therefore comply with these guarantees. In particular, AI tools cannot be used in a way that undermines lawful evidence-gathering, restricts liberty without a clear legal basis, or interferes with the ability of defendants to understand and challenge the case against them.
The National AI Policy’s ethical principles (see ‘Outlook’ below) of beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, justice, and explicability are designed to mitigate risks such as algorithmic bias, discrimination, and misuse of personal data that could undermine rights to privacy, equality, and fair treatment. The DPP Law also reinforces these protections by recognising privacy as a fundamental right and by granting individuals the right to object to automated decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on them.
Regional and international human rights treaties to which Rwanda is a party also inform this framework. Rwanda has ratified the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (‘ACHPR’), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (‘ICCPR’) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (‘CRC’). Relevant provisions include the right to a fair trial under Article 7 of the ACHPR, the right to fair trial and privacy protections under Articles 14 and 17 of the ICCPR, as well as safeguards for children in conflict with the law under Articles 16 and 40 of the CRC.
Rwanda has also aligned its National AI Policy with the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI (2021) and the OECD AI Principles, emphasising transparency, accountability, and robust security as human rights.
Outlook
Rwanda’s strategy is to move from being an AI consumer to a global innovator and ‘Africa’s Centre of Excellence in AI’, anchored in its National AI Policy adopted in April 2023. The Policy was developed by the Ministry of ICT and Innovation (‘MINICT’) and RURA with support from several other organisations, and was the first AI policy adopted by an African state. It focuses on capacity building both in terms of upskilling the workforce and ensuring infrastructure access. RURA serves as the technical regulator developing ethical AI guidelines and principles, and a dedicated Responsible AI Office (RAIO) was established in June 2026 within the MINICT to lead implementation and monitoring.
In April 2025, Rwanda hosted the Global AI Summit on Africa in Kigali. At this summit, Rwanda, among other African states, adopted the Africa Declaration on AI, setting out a unified continental vision for ethical, inclusive and sustainable AI development. More specifically, the Declaration seeks to:
- Leverage the potential of AI to drive innovation and competitiveness to advance Africa’s economies, industries, and societies;
- Position Africa as a global leader in ethical, trustworthy, and inclusive AI adoption; and
- Foster the sustainable and responsible design, development, deployment, use, and governance of AI technologies in Africa.
In July 2025, the newly appointed Chief Executive Officer of Rwanda Information Society Authority (‘RISA’), Antoine Sebera, reportedly stated that AI and cybersecurity will be strategic priorities. RISA is a government authority established under the MINICT with the mission of digitising Rwandan society through increased usage of technology.
In February 2026, Rwanda signed an agreement with Anthropic aiming to design and deploy AI solutions to Rwanda’s public sector systems, among other objectives. Under a three-year memorandum of understanding, Anthropic will provide Rwanda with access to Anthropic’s Claude large language model and Claude Code, along with hands-on training, capacity building, and API credits.
On 18 June 2026, Rwanda approved the establishment of a National AI Agency as the country’s first institution dedicated entirely to AI. The agency will serve as the central AI coordination body, overseeing national AI research and skills development while establishing governance frameworks and standards to ensure responsible innovation.
CASES
As at September 2026, no judicial rulings on the use or misuse of AI have been identified in Rwanda.