Rwanda cannabis production facility to be complete by September

The construction of a cannabis production plant in Rwanda’s northern district of Musanze is set to be complete by September, local media reports.

The facility is being put up by King Kong Organics (KKOG) Rwanda, a subsidiary of the American corporation KKOG Global, which in March this year secured a five-year license from President Paul Kagame's government to produce cannabis.

The Rwanda Development Board (RDB) authorised the company to cultivate cannabis for medicinal purposes, extraction, and export of various medicinal products.

The New Times newspaper on Wednesday quoted a KKOG executive as saying the plant will be complete by the first week of September.

“We are at 70 per cent to complete the facility set up and we expect to finish by the first week of September,” KKOG founder and CEO Rene Joseph said.

The company said it had poured $10 million (Ksh.1.29 billion) into machinery acquisition, facility construction, payment of fees in land acquisition and contractors, and importing genetically modified cannabis seeds.

The plant was initially set to be complete by May, but Joseph said a need for a new access road to the site delayed the project.

Cannabis plants grow in four to six months and KKOG seeks to produce at least 5,000 kilograms of marijuana per hectare.

In the 2023/2024 financial year, the New Times reports that RDB allocated Rwf700 million (about Ksh.69 million) to the cannabis project while in this fiscal year, it allocated more than Rwf2 billion (about Ksh.197 billion).

Officials project that a hectare of cannabis can generate up to $10 million in revenue, which is 30 times more than the $300,000 a hectare of flowers generates.

KKOG is the largest licensed company in Africa with other cannabis extraction facilities in DR Congo, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Uganda and South Africa, among others.

On the other hand, Kenya and Tanzania have yet to legalise cannabis but still illegally produce the commodity in amounts.