On Thursday, 16th May 2013, kLab hosted the second edition of Ni-!mpamo, (reality) a monthly event that brings local successful ICT entrepreneurs to speak to ICT youngsters aspiring to become Techpreneurs. The 120 minute event hosted a young inspiring Rwandan Kaneza Innocent. Born in Kigali in 1983, Kaneza carries with him many years of professional experience in software development, web design, web development, Graphic design and mobile application solutions, project management and that in several sectors from government, telecoms, banking, insurance, private, NGOs, etc.

"I made a website with a friend and we approached many big companies but they all refused to buy it. A year later, many websites started coming up and due to our low persistence we didn't make it," he said in regret. Along this path of trials and tribulations, he learnt a lot and made the best of these lessons. After this inspiring speech, the floor was open to the audience who expressed a lot of their concerns and Kaneza as well as the crowd had solutions to air out as well.

Some of the major issues that came up were: market realities and opportunities, how to manage a startup, where to invest/spend, difficulty in managing the coding and business part of a project, and the biggest issue faced by young developers - sleeping projects. Ntwari Shaka, a kLab tenant says having to share failures and success stories makes it easy for future programmers to develop apps with ease. "This discuss was motivating and boosting. It was an eye opener for those of us that are going to face the market soon and I, personally loved how people's talked about the proper marketing strategies to use like first making a free trial project then charging later,"

Over the course of his experience, Kaneza has won local and international awards such as; the award winning project of Electricity payment project (TIGA Award 2007 organized by UNECA …). The DG Immigration and Emigration online visa services which won several local and international awards in service delivery. He is currently the senior consultant at Esicia LTD, a local software development and security firm servicing different institutions in the different sectors of activities stated above with activities in Rwanda and across Africa in general.

Thirty three students from Stanford Business School along with Nobel Prize winning economist Myron Scholes visited kLab. The trip led by four students is part of Stanford Global Study Trip and was focused on understanding the rapid growth rates taking place in Rwanda. The group of thirty three had a lunch session at kLab where after being introduced by Paula Ingabire, External Support Division Manager at RDB-IT they were given a tour by Claude Migisha, kLab General Manager who also answered questions raised about kLab activities and mission.

Among presenters were Carnegie Mellon's Director Dr. Bruce Krogh who introduced Carnegie Mellon University-Rwanda and talked of the university's multidisciplinary curriculum that strikes a fine balance between technology, business, and innovation, preparing the next generation of IT leaders in East Africa as well as its expectations out of the ten year contract it signed with the government of Rwanda. Tony Sebera, ag. CEO of Broadband Systems Corporation also gave a brief highlight of the success of broadband which is one of the key elements the government is investing in a lot as it strives to become the East Africa's ICT hub.

They expressed the team's joy at the opportunity to engage and share perspectives with notable tenants and mentors at kLab. Andrew James a business students from Stanford says his excitement to come to Rwanda and kLab in particular had no limit. "We've only been here for about 30 minutes but this is like exactly the kind of thing everyone is excited about, because you know coming from Silicon Valley and seeing this, it's really exciting. " he said. "From what we've heard it's quite remarkable how much Rwanda has done to get on pace with the first running world, some programs are being made here yet they haven't been made in the USA which is really worthy of attention," he added.

Lindsay Wishart who was also part of the team shares how revealing her first visit to Rwanda is. "It's my first visit to Rwanda and I didn't know how it would be, though it's really been amazing, we visited many places but what's most exciting is the way Rwanda's economy is growing particularly in relation to ICT, we have heard of the incredible projects being accomplished by The Government of Rwanda and young Techpreneurs here at kLab." Lindsay said. She also talked of the impressive appearance that kLab has, "It actually looks like the Google office setup, it's really amazing to find out that the same thing happening in The USA can happen here as well," she concluded.

Among the guests was Myron Scholes, Professor of Finance, Emeritus, at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, and co-originator of the Black-Scholes options pricing model. Scholes was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1997 for his new method of determining the value of derivatives. The great welcome was concluded with a short interaction between Stanford students and kLab tenants, some of the students actually talked of having thoughts of moving to Rwanda in the future.

I recently moved to Kigali and want to learn about what is happening here. Part of my interest has been piqued by what is going on at kLab. I happened to stop in during a session where tenants were presenting their projects, and they all seemed related to traffic apps.

Later I came to realize I was seated in one of kLab open events called Meet the Market. An event that brings together Applications developers (Mobile or Web) plus final year university students' IT dissertation projects and link them with targeted end users and potential investors to facilitate them bring to reality and commercialize their project ideas. it's a series of events run by sector, the day I visited, kLab tenants were showcasing applications that can help The Rwanda National Police to improve its service to the people.

It was interesting to see the different projects being worked on. There was a wide range as far as where each person was on their project; some were just preliminary ideas, while some had working parts to demonstrate. One of the best aspects of the session was that the audience included policemen, who are a perfect group to provide real-world feedback on these types of apps. They were very interested to see how the apps would be used. The policemen asked very good questions and seemed to understand the ways in which technology would be helpful in their field. Including the non-technical perspective in these types of technical discussions is a great approach and I was very impressed to see it.

Another aspect I found very interesting was to see the types of problems that are being solved. Not only was there discussion of the immediate problem - how to take your driver's exam or how to pay your ticket fines, but there was also a focus on solving more wide-spread issues around how "things are done" in Rwanda. For instance, one presenter focused on the problem of how long everything takes. He described a system where a person must make many different trips to many different places, sometimes repeating visits when not everything was in order, to simply pay a traffic ticket. This can take a person days of effort; part of the problem he wants to solve is to speed up the process and save the unnecessary time it takes for completing every-day tasks, like paying traffic fines. This is not only a solution to a technical problem, but a change in mindset for the culture in Kigali - another impressive aspect for me to see being discussed and addressed with ITC.

As a software engineer who believes that design and thinking beyond technology are just as important as the solution itself, this session was very encouraging for me to see. Altogether this was a very interesting first glance at what is going on at kLab and I am looking forward to learning more about kLab, Kigali, and Rwanda.