From October 2 to 3, Rwanda held the Smart Rwanda conference. Held under the auspices of the Ministry of Youth and ICT the conference flowed from the Smart Africa agenda on which Rwanda plays a pivotal role and is the lead for one of the pillars. The two-day event featured topical ICT content such as Digital Payments, ICT Governance, Internet innovations, Smart City, Open Data and Digital innovations. The state of ICT in Rwanda, ICT business innovations, partnerships, and even bigger opportunities in Broadband and general Data space, were discussed.
Kagame, 56, is credited with lifting Rwanda from the devastation of its 1994 genocide to its fast-paced economy of today. He has said his goal is to make the county an African technology hub. He tweets mostly in English and provides an email address for respondents to write him directly.
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"The Internet is a needed public utility as much as water and electricity," declared President Paul Kagame at the Transform Africa summit, held in Kigali, Rwanda's capital city, last October to discuss the future of broadband in Africa.
The conference dubbed “Smart Rwanda Day” aims at bringing together various stakeholders in ICT sector and international groups in a move to share experience in each country’s effort to bridge the digital divide across all socio-economic sectors.
The choice of Kigali as host did not surprise Information Communication Technology (ICT) experts; Mr. Kagame's government takes ICT so seriously that it aims to creating an ICT infrastructure comparable to any in the developed world. The choice was also not surprising since Rwanda hosted the Connect Africa summit in 2007 that championed broadband connectivity for the continent.
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