I had the pleasure to meet, last Thursday, the Republic of Rwanda ambassador, Mr. Charles KAYONGA, to discuss Cyber Security cooperation in Africa. We were received with great honor and it was a good surprise to discover a country full of passionate and entrepreneurs' people.

Rwanda situation and localization overview

It is very well-known that China government together with some private Chinese company are proceeding with massive and long term investment in Africa. For our Cyber Security industry, it does not really matter what are the industry they invest, all of them will involved technologies which need to be secured.

However, this past years of investment have build great relationship between China and most of African countries, including Rwanda. They are one of the smallest (by size and population) country in Africa and this is mainly why they have open borders to welcome talented peoples and facilitate traffic.

One perfect example is their airport, since Rwanda is a central position in Africa, lot of Africans are Flying from or through Republic of Rwanda. Another correct example are the HUGE infrastructure project in Africa (like railway road) that are all passing across their borders.

From my perspective Rwanda is in Africa what France is in Europe. Not an essential point of passage but a central one for cost, safety and one of the fastest one.

IT development is a main focus

One of the first things you may not know about Rwanda is about their IT Infrastructure. It is highly developed on all main industries such as Telecom, Datacenters, Network, etc... Most of the country is reachable in 4G or at least 3G and they already possess plenty of homemade applications to exploit such opportunities.

The lack of road infrastructures make it difficult for proximity help and services for the citizens of Rwanda. Then government decided to relied on new technologies to help them!

Drones system

One of the reason Road infrastructure are difficult to build is due to a big area of volcano and mountain. Therefore some entrepreneurs develop drones system to drop medicines and others primary supplies to recluse cities. These drones are capable for high lift and automatic guidance system.

Hospital applications

As well as drones system some hospitals are providing medical check through smartphones' APP. You can, for instance, follow-up your pregnancy terms and, if suggested by the APP/doctor, take the needed time to go for a physical check-up in an hospital.

Zero-corruption policies and woman empowerment

Republic of Rwanda is the 1st (or second, depends on the survey) country in the world with the most women seating at the deputy chamber. Just before (or after) Sweden. Also I did not choose my front cover without any thought... As you can see woman are highly qualified and they are less discriminated than most of countries around the world.

It maybe a reason why they are one of the country with less corruption in the world. (Women are not only as efficient as men they also possess lot of integrity)

One reason they almost do not have corruption is obviously because of policies they are applying but also because they have corruption system in place to control such corruption.

On a cyber security persective it is one of the great possibilities to be enforced even more with products such as Cyber Threat Intelligence and system vulnerabilities assessments. (money fraud is only one example...)

Bank system, a great opportunity to catch

Before IT development, in Rwanda, only very little citizens had bank account and all money exchange were made in cash. However, in order to improve this many banks developped application and smart payment to avoid such difficulties.

When you are taking the bus, buying groceries, or simply for legal purchasement, everything can be done online through mobile payment. Bank industry are developping such technologies in order to collect more clients and it is working greatly. When that is said, let me tell you that African payment solutions and DirectPay are some of the largest online payment system in the world...

Bank industries are also developing very fast because of all foreigners investement they received which is of course boosting their online activities. They development forecast are reaching the sky as China was few years before.

MY CONCLUSION:

The Republic of Rwanda and Africa in general are modernising their business and it is now one of the best moment to start doing business there. It is of course one of the reasons me and my company had met his excellency Charles KAYONGA but also because the country is now opening gates by giving great opportunities to open an office there.

I would like to give a special thanks to Isaac (with a wonderful green tie) which helped us bring China and Rwanda one step closer!

Original post: Republic of Rwanda the new Cyber Security Eldorado