In May 2012 kLab, the open innovation space located in Kigali’s ICT Park in Telecom House, Kacyiru will open its doors to young and dynamic innovators and entrepreneurs. kLab’s mission is to promote, facilitate, and support the development of innovative ICT solutions by nurturing a vivid community of entrepreneurs and mentors in Kigali.
Recently, kLab held a competition among potential members and designers to develop its logo. Several people participated in the competition via kLab’s Twitter account (@klabrw) and Eugene Rwagasore, a graphic designer with Nyaruka emerged as the winner. A graduate of KIST in Computer Science, Rwagasore’s passion for graphic design and programming emerged after secondary school. Rwagasore entered the kLab logo competition because of his desire to create something meaningful and long-lasting in Rwanda’s emerging ICT market.
In line with the Government of Rwanda’s objectives, kLab’s goals are to support the development of ICT in Rwanda and to make Rwanda a focal point for IT in the region. kLab was developed with the support of the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology in the Office of the President, the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), JICA, the Private Sector Federation (PSF), and the Carnegie-Mellon University Rwanda. With its location in the ICT Park, kLab members will benefit greatly from being part of the country’s first innovation incubator. In this space members will develop the projects and businesses that will form Rwanda’s ICT industry, under the guidance of experts and mentors from around the world.
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.
