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FORTUNE.COM // JANUARY 2020
students in 2011 and upgraded
to a new campus in November.
Rwandan President Paul
Kagame has long said that his
goal is to make Rwanda an
African Singapore. But it has
become more of an African
Estonia, the powerful, practical
back-end workhorse of Europe’s
burgeoning tech scene.
Part of Rwanda’s sales pitch to
tech companies is its lack of red
tape. The country ranks 38th in
terms of ease of doing business,
according to the World Bank,
the best ranking in continental
Africa and ahead of the Neth-
erlands (42), India (63), and
Brazil (124); the U.S. is sixth.
While political freedoms in
the country are constrained by
Western standards, social prog-
ress has piggybacked Rwanda’s
social development (its parlia-
TECH
his company has sold, only that its devices
have been bought in 46 countries, including in
Europe and in the U.S.
Fresh from attending a web summit in
Lisbon, Lionel Mpfizi, CEO of Awesomity Lab,
a software development firm, describes Kigali’s
entrepreneurialism as agile. “It takes six hours
to start a business here,” says Mpfizi, who also
goes by the more informal name Captain Awe-
some. “Since the genocide, we have been able
to leapfrog progress. It was a massive reboot.
Now our everyday life is a startup mentality.”
Some of Mpfizi’s recent work involves
developing a ride-hailing app called Move,
including chauffeured and driverless options,
for a fleet of electric cars. The app is part of a
partnership among Volkswagen, Siemens, and
the Rwandan government to pilot the use of
electric cars in Rwanda.
Ingabire, the tech minister, is fond of calling
Kigali a “proof-of-concept hub.” When I note
that a simpler term for that is “dreamland” and
suggest she ask Rwanda’s President to promote
her to minister of dreams, she laughs before
regaining bureaucratic professionalism, albeit
with a personal twist: “I have three children—7,
5, and 2. They will know the genocide only as
history. They deserve Rwanda as their dream-
land. We all do.”
ment is 61% women, the highest percentage
in the world). In 2017, the country embraced
Swahili as an official language—to better inte-
grate with its neighbors.
Whatever Rwanda is doing, it appears to
be paying off. In November, the International
Monetary Fund revised its growth forecast for
the country in 2019 to a zippy 8.5%, up from
an already strong 7.8%.
Mara Group, founded in 1996, is trying to
capitalize on Rwanda’s rapid economic devel-
opment and, for that matter, the similar gains
taking place across much of Africa. The com-
pany’s two Android smartphones—$159 for
the basic version and $229 for the higher-end
one—compete mostly against cheaper models
from Samsung and Chinese phonemakers
Huawei and Transsion.
“Yes, it’s cheaper to import. But if we think
that, we’ll never produce anything,” says Mara
Group CEO Ashish Thakkar. “You have to cre-
ate because a copy-and-paste approach always
means that by the time you’ve pasted, you’re
years behind.”
In addition to its factory in Kigali, which
employs more than 200 workers, Mara has
opened a plant in South Africa and is consid-
ering a third one in Nigeria.
Thakkar declined to say how many phones
Rwandan Presi-
dent Paul Kagame
(in blue) and
Mara Group CEO
Ashish Thakkar
(left) at Mara’s
smartphone fac-
tory in Kigali. The
plant has added
to the city’s tech
credentials.
COURTESY OF M
ARA PHONES
