Why We're Backing Clubhouse in Rwanda

As I joined one room started by Brenda, Kathia, and Kelly (three of the five-member popular socialite group known as Mäckenzie on Instagram) on Sunday night, the chat seemed to have been going on for a while. Israel and I had just concluded our third hour-long weekly session of The Kigalian Café, an over-coffee-like conversation where we talked about how we think Clubhouse, a new voice-only social media application, could shape discourse in, and about, Rwanda. Close to one hundred users (mainly young Rwandans) had already joined, and as a new entrant, you find yourself on the “listener” panel and lend your ear to figure out what's going on.

The three moderators had just asked a question to the audience: "If you had to change your name, which other name would you pick and why?" One male participant said Manzi, and another woman said Ikirezi. There were slightly more than ten people on the panel of “speakers” at the time, and it went in rounds, as they all shared their answers — there were many more fancy names than I can remember.