Why One Rwandan Entrepreneur Is Raising One Million Dollars to Establish ‘Africa Engineering Base’
A Rwandan startup entrepreneur, called Shikama Dioscore, is rallying people across the web—using his influence on Facebook and connections across networks, such as kLab mentors, peers from YALI and friends from the Mandela Washington Fellowship programme—to raise one million U.S. dollars. He says he wants to establish Africa’s next big thing to support tech innovation: the Africa Engineering Base.
Up to 85% of registered businesses close before celebrating their first year, he says, and it’s mainly due to skill shortage and business leaders not finding the necessary tech-savy workers to implement their ideas.
According to the fundraiser, the base would “bring competent computer engineers under one roof,” making it easy for African startups to access and afford highly equipped manpower to solve “continental engineering, relevant” problems.
The initial target is eleven thousand U.S. dollars ($11,000), which will mainly be spent in a recruitment process, looking for “top fifteen engineers” from five different countries: Morocco, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Rwanda and Kenya. The campaign is currently ongoing via LaunchGood.
Shikama is the C.E.O. of GO, a web and application company he founder in 2011; currently focused on building internet presence for SMEs. He graduated last year, from the Faculty of Sciences, department of Biology, at the University of Rwanda (UR). He is one of the young enthusiasts who surged through the industry from kLab, Rwanda’s tech hub for young ICT entrepreneurs.
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