Dr Armen Orujyan, PhD Founder Athgo Corporation held a one hour discussion with kLab members on the evening of 26th October 2013.

Armen serves on the United Nations venerated Broadband Commission for Digital Development and is also a mentor for youth and solutions building for entrepreneurs.

He held a discussion with kLab members on issues like the essence of networking, hardwork, knowledge and co-working in tech business.

"You need to focus on having the knowledge first. 1/3 of businesses fail not because they lack funds but because they lacked an understanding of a particular aspect of their businesses" said Dr Armen

Armen advised kLab members to take advantage of free online study material like Khan Academy, Coursera and Udacity in advancing their knowledge.

Dr Armen appreciated the existence of kLab saying that such an open space is vital for entrepreneurship development.

Present at the discussion was Honorable Minister of Youth and ICT, Jean Philibert Nsengimana and CMU-R Professor Michel Bezy.

Athgo is one of the leading entrepreneurial platforms in the world.

Armen founded Athgo while still in college in 1999 with an ambition to help young adults avoid many of his own past challenges as an immigrant and young entrepreneur with minimal resources and limited opportunities

Rarely you will notice a computer programmer walking with hardware, wires and breadboards to a hackathon.

On 19th October 2013, a team of four walked into the Rwanda National ICT4AG Hackathon with an arduino microcontroller. And on the evening of 20th October, the same team walked out of the hackathon with a brand new retina display Macbook Pro award.

This Arduino team that worn the first prize composed of Dukundane Gashongore Prince, Muramira Hilary, Basomingera Robert and IGIRANEZA Origene who developed an electronic gadget that tests soil fertility and gives recommendation of the missing soil nutrients.

The gadget also has a wireless connection to a Soil Fertility national database that will map every individual plot's number with its soil fertility status.

The following best 4 teams were also each awarded a brand New i7 HP Laptop.

This hackathon that took place at kLab had brought together 50 hackers both from kLab and local universities to a 36hour non stop coding session.

The competition involved 12 teams each made of 5 to 3 people, all focusing on solving 3 challenges.

Challenge 1:How can bidirectional information sharing and communication between farmers and extension workers be encouraged or improved? Key areas of interest include information sharing and advisory on soil fertility, fertilizers, weather information, pests, diseases, access to localized farming inputs, multimedia content and ability to verify counterfeit products.

Challenge 2: Through ICT applications, how can access to financial services be made easier for farmers through a disruptive, innovative tool?

Challenge 3: How can the one cow per poor family (Gira Inka) initiative be monitored, evaluated and enhanced through use of ICT.

The Winner of the National hackathon will enter Regional ict4ag Hackthon that will involve winners from Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Madagascar in November 2013.

Both Hackthons are part of the larger ict4ag international conference due on 04th to 08th November at Serena Hotel in Kigali, Rwanda.

Rwanda National ICT4AG Hackthon was organized by MINAGRI, CTA, kLAB and Rwanda ICT Chamber with sponsorship from AGRA.

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

Over 600 young participants from 68 countries, Rwanda included, met in San José, Costa Rica from 9-11 September 2013 attending The International Telecommunication Union’s BYND2015 Global Youth Summit. Over 4000 others joined the discussion virtually from 50 hubs in 30 countries in self-organized workshops. This allowed a generation of 1000 unique ideas through crowdsourcing platforms. In this digital era where social media are revolutionizing things, tens of thousands of people joined the conversation via social media with a combined reach on Twitter alone of over 16 million. The online conversation took place in 74 languages, where education, health and access to ICTs ranked as the highest trending topics.

As the BYND2015 Global Youth Summit was taking place in Costa Rica, kLab in Kigali also hosted the ITU Kigali Hub discussion. Young people from Rwanda gathered at kLab to virtually take part to the summit with aim to influence the priorities of global leaders and decision-makers at the United Nations as they set the agenda for sustainable development beyond 2015 to build on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). 9th September was dubbed with the theme GET AHEAD, and this was the day that attracted the largest crowd and most vibrant discussion both in the gathering and on social media.

Young participants at BYND2015 Kigali Hub comprised of students, CEO’s and journalists as well as kLab tenants called on the government of Rwanda to boost private lead initiatives and broaden the space for innovation, employment as well as the market. They also emphasized that the big gap between skills acquired at graduation time and the skills needed in this competitive market is still large and hailed programs like kLab-University for trying to bridge this skills inefficiency.

As ideas were being shared by participants, others that couldn’t make it were able to join the discussion online with the hash-tags #BYND2015 #Rwanda and #ICT4D. As far as the Kigali Hub is concerned, the extended discussion sessions held at kLab were an eye opener to most participants, who as mentioned above are all trying to find their way towards a successful future for their startups’ ideas. Some of the main issues pointed out during these lightning discussions to mention a few were; poor research before building a solution, lack of business skills, lack of resources and tech skill-sets in general.

The end of the 3 days event was marked by sharing The BYND2015 Global Youth Declaration which shall be presented by Costa Rica President Laura Chinchilla at this year’s UN general assembly and she actually mentioned that it’s one of the best outcome documents she’s ever seen. To paraphrase the final paragraph of the summit declaration, this is not an outcome but rather a starting place for continued dialogue for young people to be included as full partners in the post-2015 global development process. So stayed tuned!