At night, Rwanda’s unfolding hills light up and form a beautiful pattern which also accentuates the city’s growing number of residents with access to electricity, relatively good housing and generally well supplied with clean water. In effect, Rwanda is reigning in poverty.

From an aerial view, Rwanda’s breathtaking landscapes, punctuated by a series of crisscrossing rivers and a few blank patches of red volcanic soils, gives the impression that Rwanda is a land of massive agricultural opportunities yet to be exploited.

The short drive from Kigali International Airport to the city offers visitors a refreshing look into a country-good roads, well-light streets and a series of upcoming commercial centres which demonstrate just how far imposing the commercial capital is ready to go.

Along the streets, passengers wearing neatly-fitting helmets and riding on motor-cycle taxis underline Kigali’s growing demand for modest and comfortable means of transport.

The operators of the motor-vehicle taxis wear green jackets and carry at least an extra helmet for their passengers, a signal that in Rwanda, safety issues are not taken for granted. At times, it looks like a delicate balancing act for the passengers, though.

Rwanda is looking set to conquer its part of the world, fast demonstrating that a country’s misfortunes can be used as the entry point for a critical re-engineering process that considers the way business is done in the entire country.

Rwanda’s story is not its rise from the rubble of the 1994 genocide, the story is just how fast the country has revitalised herself to overtake several other more peaceful states which have remained stagnant in the 21st century.

From the look of the engineering works on the runway at the Kigali International Airport, the ease with which immigration officials undertake their duty and the relative calmness of the entire scheme of business, Rwanda is no doubt scaling greater heights.

Looking at Rwanda from an outsider’s perspective, it is almost impossible to tell whether the country still suffers from the deep scars of the 1994 genocide. The people do not seem to have specific sensitivities or hate for each other, in fact, they love each other.

The country is better known as a pacesetter in the Information, Communication Technologies (ICT) initiatives and has achieved what to many other African countries like Ethiopia for instance, would consider a feat in the ICT deregulation.

For President Paul Kagame, ICT is the most pro-active invention ever created against poverty, whose use he advocates in order to cut down on the role of the middle-men, who eat the hard earnings of farmers. He believes ICT tools should cease to be symbols of status.

"In 10 short years, what was once an object of luxury and privilege, the mobile phone has become a basic necessity in Africa," President Kagame told a recent Summit in Kigali.

"Farmers use this medium to receive market information of where to sell their products at better prices," he told delegates including six African leaders during an ICT summit.

In Rwanda, ICT is rapidly becoming the engineering tool on which every business transaction is based. Even though the prices of various ICT tools and equipment still remain beyond the reach of many, efforts to reduce these prices are now underway.

Internet access in Kigali is free in most international hotels unlike in most places in Africa where access to the internet is still considered a terrible luxury.

ICT is an enabler for businesses in Kigali. Rwandan businesses utilise free broadband access to lure customers to their shops, in effect using the internet to add value to their products, unlike in places like Nairobi, where such facilities are not as yet accessible.

Source: East African Business Week