There has been a lot of hard work going into the first incarnation of the kLab. Thanks in large part to support from RDB, the tireless efforts of the Design Village and an amazing commitment of financial support from JICA, we are closing in our goal. Have a look at the image to the left and you should have an idea just how far we've come in such a short while.

Last November, I along with my partner Nicolas Pottier of Nyaruka, Ltd. attended an ICT Chamber meeting with the aim of determining actionable goals for ICT in Rwanda. Out of that meeting, with many stakeholders from the tech community in Rwanda, came a clear call for an open innovation space to bring young entrepreneurs together for networking and mentorship. At that meeting we teamed up with key players in the community including Atsushi Yamanaka of JICA/RDB, Clement Uwaheneza of the Rwanda Software Association, and Patrick Kabagema, the ICT Chamber President. It was exciting to see how easy it was for us to form a common understanding of what was needed. We just needed to figure out how to make it happen.

Sharing in our mission of sparking technology entrepreneurship, CMU-Rwanda's Associate Director, Michel Bézy helped to form the kLab Working Group. We've since pulled in key players in the community, including MINICT, RDB, CODEPAC and the iHills to make sure that everyone's goals were aligned. That group has gone on to meet weekly to identify the next actionable steps and then to execute toward the ultimate goal -- opening the doors to Rwanda's first innovation center to inspire and mentor the next great technologists in the region.

It's been a tremendous amount of time, but we are finally coming to the point where we can physically see the fruits of our labor.