About RWBuild · Rwanda Build Program
The studio behind
Rwanda’s builders.
RWBuild is a Kigali-based Entrepreneur Support Organization and venture-building platform — developing talent, supporting founders, and contributing deployable technology to Rwanda’s digital economy since 2018.
- 2018founded
- $5M+research & program funding mobilized
- 8+software products
- 10+companies launched
Our model
A different kind of tech hub
Most ESOs (entrepreneur support organizations) run cohorts. RWBuild doesn’t. We work with founders continuously, one at a time, from first concept idea through launch — providing capital, senior engineering mentorship, weekly code/business reviews, and a real testing ground for whatever we build.
That testing ground is the Rooftop Ikawa Café — a working café above our office in Kiyovu that doubles as a live software-testing lab, hosting 20+ community events a year. It’s fully self-funded, independent of RWBuild’s own operating budget, and it’s where several of our products were tested with real customers before launch.
In exchange for funding, mentorship, and infrastructure, RWBuild takes an equity stake in the companies we help build. RWBuild connects training to real delivery and venture pathways — and our portfolio is the proof.
RWBuild is an established platform for venture building and applied innovation in Kigali — quietly contributing to some of Rwanda’s most important digital platforms since 2018, after a 2017 pilot that launched three startups in three months proved the model worked.
Origins
RWBuild grew out of Common World Inc. (CWInc), the US technology firm our founder ran for two decades before relocating to Kigali in 2012. From 2013 he mentored Rwanda’s earliest startup teams at kLab, the government innovation hub — and saw the same pattern everywhere: talented teams failing for lack of development process, structure, and accountability. The 2017 pilot was built to fix exactly that, and its three launches in three months became the blueprint for the full-time studio that opened in 2018.
One principle has held from the start: we invest in builders. Founders, support companies, and independent contractors work with RWBuild as partners in ventures — with training, workspace, equipment, and mentoring behind them, funding on the table for the best projects, and job links into the startups we back.
The build record
- 2013 Mentoring begins at kLab, Rwanda’s government innovation hub.
- 2014 Hello Kigali ships — proving Kigali teams can plan, build, and launch fast.
- 2017 RWBuild pilot: three startups launched in three months, including ifeza.rw — still running today.
- 2018 RWBuild launches full-time; Guhemba Ltd. founded.
- 2019 EventBash launches; Candidate Program training begins. Guhemba MVP launches.
- 2020 MurugoCloud architecture begins; ambulance data-collection app built with the Ministry of Health — the seed of 912Rwanda; US NIH grant won.
- 2021 Rooftop Ikawa Café opens as our real-world testing lab; Guhemba app pilots there; Code Summit trains 50+ developers.
- 2023 912Rwanda Phase 1 launches as Rwanda’s national dispatch system; Candidate.rw ships.
- 2024 Guhemba adds invoicing & eShop; Candidate.rw expands to founders and startups.
- 2025 Murugo AI launches — AI agents for Kigali and the startup community.
- 2025 912Rwanda launches Phase 2 — destination-suggestion logic with rapid patient data and facility support.
Founder
Rob Rickard — Founder & Director
Rob Rickard is a US tech entrepreneur who has lived and worked in Kigali since 2012. He is the founder and director of RWBuild, founder and interim CEO of Guhemba, and the core architect behind 912Rwanda’s technology.
Before Rwanda, Rob spent two decades building and running a US technology consulting business, delivering communication and web infrastructure to 180+ schools, nonprofits, and small businesses across the American Midwest, and speaking at national technology and education conferences. In 2013 he began mentoring Kigali’s earliest tech startups through kLab, Rwanda’s government innovation hub — work that led, in 2017, to a three-month pilot that launched three startups, and in 2018 to RWBuild’s full-time launch.
Rob is also a published researcher: co-author on six peer-reviewed studies on Rwanda’s emergency-care system (2020–2025) — work that grew directly out of 912Rwanda.
Six peer-reviewed publications (2020–2025)
- 2020 — Global Health Innovation Journal: Collaboration for preliminary design of a mobile health solution for ambulance dispatch in Rwanda.
- 2023 — NIH: Challenges and opportunities to improve efficiency and quality of prehospital emergency care using an mHealth platform.
- 2024 — BMJ Open: Mapping the processes and information flows of a prehospital emergency care system in Rwanda.
- 2025 — BMJ Open: Developing and integrating a destination decision support algorithm: 912Rwanda study protocol.
- 2025 — International Journal of Emergency Medicine 18(1): Reaching the right facility for emergency patients: destinations of patients transported by EMS in Kigali, Rwanda.
- 2025 — BMJ Open: Use of an innovative electronic communications platform (912Rwanda) to improve prehospital transport of injured people in Rwanda.
“My mission is to contribute to the growth of Rwanda’s tech industry into Africa’s premier hub for software development. I achieve this by partnering and investing in talented individuals, constructing practical systems, and mentoring the next generation of founders.” — Rob Rickard
Measured impact
- 250+developer-founders supported
- 90%+of tracked graduates progressed to industry roles
- 200+developers trained
- 20+community events hosted each year
RWBuild’s capacity-building programs connect learning to real work — turning underutilized college graduates into the engineers and founders of Rwanda’s software industry, in alignment with the national digital agenda.
For investors & government partners
A platform, not a program
Rooted in Kigali and connected to the United States, RWBuild combines long-term local operating experience with cross-border technical, research, and institutional relationships. We build companies, hold equity in what we build, and prepare selected ventures for the partnerships and capital their next stage requires.
Our flagship contribution, 912Rwanda, demonstrates what aligned local implementation capability, public leadership, research, and disciplined software development can deliver: RWBuild contributed technology to the platform in collaboration with Rwanda’s health institutions, with research funding from the US National Institutes of Health and the UK’s NIHR alongside the University of Utah and University of Birmingham. The work operates at national scale and is independently reported by The New Times and both universities.
Alongside it stands Guhemba — the leading fintech in Kigali — a cashless-payments super-app for merchants and customers — now piloting in Kigali and open to investment.
RWBuild is part of Common World Inc. — headquartered in Wisconsin, USA, with local offices in Kigali, Rwanda — and we’re building toward the documented, diligence-ready governance and financial infrastructure that serious institutional partners expect.
We welcome conversations with investors, development finance institutions, and government partners interested in commercial deal flow, technical-assistance partnerships, or direct investment in our portfolio companies.