Culture Snippets: Rwanda

‘Culture snippets’ is our way of sharing snippets of insights into different countries. If you want to chat about how you can use these insights to inform your product and business decisions, feel free to get in touch.

#culturesnippets #Rwanda the safest country in Africa.

Umuganda, 'coming together in common purpose to achieve an outcome' in Kinyarwanda - Every last Saturday of the month, everyone does public work together (e.g. litter cleanup, tree planting). This, and as the 1st country in the world to ban plastic bags, are why Rwanda being one of the cleanest places on the Earth.

Amahoro, a common greeting in Rwanda, means ‘everything to do with peace and connection and wholeness’.

Life can be tough with poverty & with the trauma from the genocide. Their stories were hard to listen to when we interviewed the locals on mental health & HIV at their homes.

Speaking loudly is considered rude. This might due to its history of genocide. Confronting somebody is not encouraged. Many Rwandans simply say " Sinshaka kwiteranya" ("I don't want to offend anybody"). It, therefore, could be hard to get constructive criticisms.

The sense of community is strong. People go beyond to help others. To build a decentralised health system, community health workers are elected by the community to support & keep their peers healthy.

2/3 of Rwanda’s population is < 25 (post-genocide generation). Efforts have been made to improve access to education (97% of children attend primary school – the highest rate in Africa).

Rwanda aims to be the leading ICT hub in Africa by 2024, hence the government’s significant investments in installing 4,000km fibre-optic ‘backbone’, deploying 4F LTE tech throughout Rwanda & having Africa's first high tech smartphone factory (releasing the 1st made-in-Africa Mara smartphones in Oct 2019). Mara partnered with local banks & telco firms to create a financial model so Rwandans can pay for their phones over a 2-year period.

Photos: Taken when we were on the ground helping our clients to understand more about their customers and markets in this country.