Rwanda Information Society Authority (RISA) in partnership with the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications (MITEC), National Industrial Research and Development Agency (NIRDA), with GIZ’s Digital Solutions for Sustainable Development Program (DSSD), awarded the best ICT solutions for Smart Cities in a competition dubbed Smart Kigali Challenge.

The competition aimed at encouraging the development and emergence of novel and innovative solutions to build smart cities and support cross-sectoral development objective. 

Ten startup groups made of developers, scientists, academia, companies and individuals competed. The competitors had been in a boot camp from 28^th September-1^st October; receiving trainings on Design Thinking and help, to guide teams to identify solutions and develop prototype interventions (public sector, private sector, and/or hybrid solutions) to build smart cities.

On the final day, the teams pitched their solutions to a competent and diverse Jury. Three teams namely: Team SKYROCKET, Team BINARY EARTH and STES Group emerged winners and were awarded the seed funding grants of $3,000 and expert mentorship to develop their ideas into full prototypes over the course of 3 months.

“We prepared this competition as part of the Smart City Rwanda Masterplan implementation. We called upon Rwandan young innovators to develop solutions for smart cities. The top three solutions that won, will be facilitated further in partnership with other partners like GIZ so that they contribute to the digitization of services and easing citizens’ lives” urged Rene Kabalisa, Principal for Research and Development at Rwanda Information Society Authority, RISA. 

‘The next step for the top three groups winners, is to be put in an incubation hub at a newly innovation hub “DigiCenter” to be inaugurated by the Ministry of Information, Technology and Communication, with GIZ’s support.” Stated Claudette Irere, the Director General at the Ministry of Information, Technology and Communication

Based on feedback from the joint Rwandan-German initiative ‘Moving Rwanda’, the government partners implemented the boot camp to support innovative digital ideas for Smart Cities. The boot camp’s intention is to be the first of many collaborative catalytic events to support digital innovation in Rwanda and the region.

A glimpse into top three groups winners:

1. SKYROCKET: The group created Pay-As-You-Cook metre which is building a smart device that allows you to have complete information about your GAS level for liquefied petroleum gas. It aims to curb deforestation and air pollution and make LPG use affordable to users. LPG cylinder will be made smart by adding smart device, connects cylinder to a single platform that tracks and monitors usage, giving you complete control of supply chain and will integrate with Mobile money system. 
2. STES GROUP has Bazafarm technology. The automatic solar-powered system helps a famer with a mobile phone or computer to know the amount of irrigation water to apply in the garden or the quantity of fertilisers needed in the soil. 
3. BINARY EARTH GROUP initiated Gerayo solution, a public transport based mobile application.  It seeks to ease transportation of people in and around cities by establishing the number of passengers at a bus stop at any given time. Transportation companies can know the number of passengers at a bus station and then dispatch buses accordingly. Application captures the images of passengers and relays them to companies operating public transport. The solution, according to the developers, will go a long way in addressing  the long queues at bus stations during peak hours.