German Youth Business founders to partner with Rwandan young innovators

Elias Hakizimana Nov 24, 2022Nov 24, 2022 0 Comments

By Elias Hakizimana.

A group of five German Business Founders have been in Rwanda for a week, to learn what Rwandan young innovators are doing in different perspectives so that they can collaborate in the long run.

The initiative was facilitated by Startup Germany-Africa (StArfrica), a cooperation project between the University of Rwanda and the University of Koblenz-Landau, that aims at promoting startups from science in Rwanda and in Germany.

On Tuesday, November 22, 2022, this group visited a maker space located inside Westerwelle Startup Haus in Kigali to explore kinds of prototypes and innovative projects of Rwandan young innovators.

**The maker space inside has different innovations of youth.**

The German inspiring business founders are also planning to have meetings with MINICT and RDB after previous interaction sessions with potential business partners in Rwanda.

Katharina Hartwig, the StArfrica Project Lead in Rwanda told The Inspirer that the visit is part of their project with the University of Rwanda and some higher academic institutions in Rwanda to try improving the business relations between German and Rwanda.

“Part of this is a learning incubator whereby in July, 2022 they had a final pitch of the best business ideas of Rwandan youth, in June we brought five Rwandan founders to German to learn about different sectors and explore the German market for their own startups, to meet potential partners like increasing the network and see if German could be a market for them, and now since last week, we have five founders from German to come here to learn if their business ideas could fit the Rwandan market,” Katharina explained.

**The German inspiring business founders observing some youth innovation prototypes.**

Johannes Martin, one of these German people is the founder of ALGAE RITHM, an incubation project that aims at upcycling and value expansion by integrating microalgae into the value chain of customers. His project produces feed for livestock and pets in German.

He said that he has appreciated the variety of animal and food production for humans, production in Rwanda, saying that they have enough package to take back to german to increase their value chain.

“For example, in feed production, one youth case will be to integrate such systems on our animal farm when we use the minerals as nutrient source to conserve microalgae and then use microalgae as feed supplement of feed for animals, which will increase health of animals due to high protein content and high omega free content, and reduce dependency on feed market since produced locally,” Johannes said.

The motive

“Why we came to Rwanda, we are looking for local partners, Rwanda is amazing country for especially microalgae cultivation, due to the more constant temperatures comparing to German, here the temperatures change as much as in German over the year, and the sun right is rather constant over the year comparing to German, so, the outside cultivation is easier in countries like Rwanda.” Johannes noted.

**A 3D Printing machine is one of the visited tools.**

He said that Rwanda has a lot of chicken production, where feed supply is highly reliant on supply of roots but seems to be difficulty in travelling sometimes. Johannes said that local production could help Rwandan people to create more jobs and increase the value chain locally.

“This is all the motivation to come here, and I would say that we achieved our goals to find local partners, I met very interesting people, motivation of young people here is amazing, so, we found a lot of partners for collaboration projects, we are really happy with the trip,” He added.

Helen Deacon, CEO and Co-founder of Tip me- the global tip has also appreciated the visit, saying it is possible to expand the online business in Rwanda.

“It is incredible because Rwanda has such a young population, some are entrepreneurs, people with great aspirations and great ideas, I am also currently setting up an IT team here to do online business, it has been a great journey,” Helen said.

Aline Ihirwe Uwase, 22, one of Rwandan young innovators who is in the final year at University of Rwanda’s College of Agriculture, Animal Sciences and Veterinary Medicine (CAVM) and intern at StArfrica project, said that such exchange helps both University sitting youth and graduates to think beyond their innovations with a global mind.