TBIF was showcased to high-level officials from Rwanda, the World Bank and ITU to demonstrate the impact of business incubation on private sector development. The visit was organized on the occasion with the Connect Africa Summit held in Kigali on 29-30, October, 2007.
The Government of Rwanda in its “Vision 2020”, emphasised the development of entrepreneurship and private sector promotion with ICTs being seen as a cross cutting theme in the development of all sectors of the economy. To support this, the Kigali Institute of Science, Technology and Management (KIST) established the Technology and Business Incubation Facility (TBIF) in 2005 under the Center for Innovation and Technology Transfer (CITT). Its establishment was funded by the infoDev Incubator Initiative and the Dutch development partner Nuffic.
The TBIF targets graduates from various universities and other institutions of higher learning with skills in fields such as engineering, science, technology and management. Its program develops the entrepreneurial skills necessary for graduates to take part in the economic development of Rwanda.
TBIF Manager Rajeev Aggarwal said that the TBIF provides a microenvironment for accelerating start-up business by conserving the entrepreneur's most scarce resources through cost sharing, access to capital, work space, supporting services and equipment in a flexible and timely manner.
"The idea is to unleash the power of entrepreneurship, community and capital by bringing people and business together. It gives entrepreneurs in Rwanda and Africa hope to start their own business. With a growing population of innovators and entrepreneurs, business incubation is seen as an important facilitator of small enterprise development."
H.E. Albert Butare, State Minister of Energy and Communications of Rwanda
The TBIF have trained 165 entrepreneurs in business planning on sectors such as ICT, services, construction, energy and manufacturing. In order to support those entrepreneurs who are looking for start-up capital for their small enterprises but often have no access to finance from commercial financial institutions due to insufficient securities, Rwanda has set up the KIST Enterprise Development Fund (KEDP) to help them to start their own enterprises.
The TBIF program also assists in accelerating the rate at which entrepreneurs learn core elements of business planning and business management by providing informational interchange, mentoring, technical and management.
"We give them global perspective and people are designing their plan in high level," said Aggarwal.
"We have COMTECH Rwanda, which focuses on offering high quality in vehicle tracking, monitoring and management in Rwanda in particular and in the region in general. We have CRET sarl, which is a company dealing in Biogas production from cow dung and human waste. We have more than 10 companies like those, which are innovative and contribute to client to get job on their own," Aggarwal said.
infoDev has supported business incubation activities in 10 African countries and works in close partnership with the growing African Incubator Network (AIN) to which it also provides financial support.
For more information about infoDev's Incubator Initiative activities in Africa, please see www.idisc.net/africa and the attached briefing sheet.
For more information about the TBIF Incubator, please visit their profile on the Global Network Directory by clicking here.
About Connect Africa
Connect Africa is a global multi-stakeholder partnership to mobilize the human, financial and technical resources required to bridge major gaps in information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure across the region, with the aim of supporting affordable connectivity and applications and services to stimulate economic growth, employment and development throughout Africa.
Connect Africa was launched at a Summit of leaders in Kigali, Rwanda, 29−30 October 2007, under the patronage of the President of Rwanda, Mr Paul Kagame, as well as the Chairman of the African Union and President of Ghana, His Excellency, Mr John Kufuor. It was organized by the International Telecommunication Union, the African Union, the World Bank Group and the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development, in partnership with the African Development Bank, the African Telecommunication Union, the UN Economic Commission for Africa and the Global Digital Solidarity Fund.
For more information about the Connect Africa partnership, please click here.
This article is based on Lu Juan's Africa Feature in Xin Hua News: Business incubator program gives Africans hope to start business.