High up on one of Kigali’s many hills, a group of young men gather on a terrace to play table football. On the other side of some glass doors is a brightly lit and colourful room in which small clusters of people are hunched around laptops.
This is kLab, a startup hub where young Rwandans can bring their business ideas — and receive in return free Wi-Fi, free workspace and the mentorship of university professors and business leaders.
kLab — which stands for “knowledge Lab” — is funded jointly by the Rwanda Private Sector Federation, the Rwanda Development Board and Japan International Cooperation Agency. It has been operating for over a year, but this week held its official launch, and Wired.co.uk was in attendance.
“The knowledge lab in an innovation centre where fresh and young graduates come to work on their projects especially in the tech industry,” kLab’s general manager Jovani Ntabgoba tells Wired.co.uk at the launch.
As of now has kLab has 85 tenants, which receive guidance from 21 mentors. Tenants currently include eleven startups that already have services or products on the market and are making a little money, but haven’t yet reached the point of acquiring their own offices.
“The culture is collaboration, but it’s not just collaboration; it’s positioning oneself at an age where you receive the best mentorship that you cannot find anywhere else in Rwanda,” Ntabgoba says. “At kLab we have all of the knowledge that is required for a tenant to develop their business.”
Ntabgoba’s thoughts are echoed by Michael Bezy, the associate director of Carnegie Mellon University in Rwanda, which works closely with kLab providing mentorship to tenants.
“I want you to understand the uniqueness of this kLab compared to many other iHubs in the region. The uniqueness of this one is that you are in this building and you are not alone in this building,” he says in his speech at kLab’s launch, pointing out his university is one floor below the lab, and that they are surrounded by IT businesses.
“You look at that and you say ‘I have entrepreneurs here, I have a world-class university, I have IT businesses and I have IT infrastructure’. That looks to me like a mini Silicon Valley,” says Bezy. “The only thing we are missing are venture capitalists — well, that’s what we’re working on right now. We are looking for sponsors that will give us some money that will help you start your venture.”
Some of the startups kLab has supported have already enjoyed a level of success, such as GIRA ICT, which lets Africans pay for smartphones, laptops and tablets in instalments. Another example Ntabgoba points to is mobile health application FOYO, which sends out daily health and diet information via SMS to subscribers with incurable conditions such as diabetes.
“We also have a very wonderful project done by both our mentors and tenants. It’s called TextIt. It’s a platform where one person who has no programming background can build an SMS application,” he says.
Other success stories have emerged from the two national hackathons the centre has hosted. The first, Hacking Against Corruption, had 60 participants and was organised in conjunction with Random Hacks of Kindness and Transparency International.
“They were trying to see which ICT solutions could prohibit or prevent corruption. We came up with several prototypes that are currently being developed, so we look forward to having some of them put to use,” says Ntabgoba.
The second, more recent hackathon was based around finding agriculture solutions and was won by a team who created an arduino microcontroller-based system to test soil fertility and give recommendations about missing nutrients. It also feeds back to a national database via a wireless connection, so the soil fertility of every plot in the country can be mapped. The winners will next compete with other successful teams from across East Africa in the regional final — also to be held at kLab.
Young entrepreneurs in Rwanda are challenged by a lack of skills due to the fact “the curriculum in schools is not yet innovation-oriented”, says Ntabgoba. “kLab is so important given the vision of the country of Rwanda, which is to turn into a knowledge-based economy, so us being knowledge Lab automatically makes us fit into that,” he adds.
