Welcome to Rwanda.
There’s a kind of hush in Kigali that gets under your skin. It’s not a tense, cautious silence, but a peaceful one—soft-spoken, meticulous, and unexpectedly ordered for a city nestled in the heart of East Africa.
For Kenechukwu Uche, a Nigerian tech entrepreneur who lived in the country for two years between 2022 and 2024, Rwanda wasn’t just a spontaneous escape; it became a portal into a different cadence of life.
“I liked the peace, the serenity. It’s really calm, cool, and ‘chill’ there,” he tells me. “This might sound weird, but low-level problems like light, internet, and electricity were non-existent. There’s a high level of security in Rwanda.”
And that was the sell that lured him from the hustle of Lagos into Rwanda’s gentle, if underexplored, digital nomad promise.
When Uche landed in Kigali in 2022, he didn’t come in search of buzz or scale. He came to rest. He had survived two burnouts in three years, an exhausting tour through fintech and e-commerce startups. He started his career as a product marketer at a Lagos-based furniture retail startup, Taeillo, before moving on to roles in other tech sectors.
“Work was happening Monday to Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I worked my ass off in those early years of my career,” he said.
Rwanda, beyond its post-genocide reconciliation narrative, is rewriting its story from despair. It is one of clean transport innovation, infrastructural steadiness, and government-led tech optimism.
At the centre of Kigali’s digital community is Norrsken House, a Swedish-Rwandan co-working space that radiates modernity and ambition. Uche quickly plugged into its ecosystem, surrounded by other freelancers, remote workers, and builders from across the continent.
Rwanda, as it turned out, wasn’t just a peaceful retreat—it was also ripe with tech possibility.
“This is a very new market. They are still in the early stages,” Uche said. But for someone who had cut his teeth in Nigeria’s intense and saturated tech scene, that blank canvas felt like freedom. Kigali didn’t need hustle; it needed structure, process, vision. And that, Uche realised, was a role he could play.
The W2 visa and Rwanda’s sprawling ecosystem
The move wasn’t permanent at first. Uche arrived on a tourist visa and extended it by three months. Within that time, he discovered Rwanda’s W2 Entrepreneurship Visa—a niche visa tailored for software-based entrepreneurs. While the country doesn’t have a “digital nomad visa” like its counterpart Kenya, the W2 visa is one of the closest things to it—like a nomad visa for builders.
Rwanda also offers various visa options to make travel easier, including visa-free entry for Africans introduced in November 2024. The country is working to grow its tech ecosystem and is opening up its economy to the world to support this goal.
“You can apply to the W2 visa if you are already running a software startup in your current country of residence and would love to expand operations into Rwanda,” said Uche, who was building his startup, Flintshop.
Applicants must incorporate a business through the Rwanda Development Board, rent a workspace, submit a police report from their country of residence, and write an application letter outlining their goals, said Uche.
The visa application is submitted online through Irembo, and, pending inspection and approval, successful applicants receive a one-year residency permit. Altogether, the visa could cost up to 250,000 Rwandan francs ($174).
Rwanda’s ecosystem itself is lean but not lacking. The government is deeply involved, facilitating international events and investing in infrastructure.
The mobility sector is particularly vibrant, with companies like Ampersand, BasiGo, Revoo, and Spyro pushing toward the government’s goal of full electrification of public transport by 2030. Kigali has become a policy-forward city that prioritises green innovation and invites cross-border collaboration.
In daily life, everything is structured. Rents are paid monthly, utilities metered.
A studio apartment might go for $300, while a two-bedroom in highbrow areas like Kacyiru or Kimihurura ranges between $800 to $1,200, often fully furnished. Property renters in the country prefer to collect rent monthly and in US dollars. However, Uche notes that some are open to accepting Rwandan francs, and housing costs can drop by half if you opt for an unfurnished apartment.
Food is accessible and affordable, with local delivery services like VubaVuba filling logistics gaps, but electricity costs are quite on the medium side.
“I could easily spend $1 a day on lights,” Uche shared. “And it’ll end up costing me $30 to $33 a month. Rwanda’s economy is dollarised.”
Building Flintshop and moving West
Uche’s success at Taeillo positioned him for roles in fintech, most notably at Zazuu. It was following Zazuu’s shutdown, after the startup failed to raise money, that Uche moved to Rwanda where he has found fresh direction.
Today, Uche wears two hats: advisor and founder. He advises early-stage tech companies, especially in fintech and cross-border payments. He’s also building Flintshop, an e-commerce platform designed to blend AI-generated storefronts with stablecoin payments.
“We think e-commerce of the future would build their websites with AI and accept payments with stablecoins,” he said.
Uche’s team has been training a large language model (LLM) for over a year. With Flintshop, his goal is to allow users to prompt a functional e-commerce website into existence in under five minutes.
“We’ve been training the LLM for over a year. I have a Machine Learning engineer on the team that is leading that, and I also have an LLM trainer who works at Nvidia.”
In 2024, Uche also earned a full scholarship on merit to the University of California to study Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Currently in Nigeria to renew his passport, he plans to leave again by summer to begin the program. His ambition for Flintshop remains intact as he continues to build. Uche didn’t reveal a launch date yet.
Living lightly, building boldly
Uche’s time in Rwanda was marked by something simple: intentionality. He describes Kigali as a place that “exceeded” his expectations.
Safety, community, infrastructure, and opportunity converged in a way that felt rare. He met entrepreneurs from across the continent, hosted dinners, gave talks, and slowly embedded himself in the city’s pulse.
There is a valuable clarity in Uche’s story—a reminder that building isn’t always about scale or speed. Sometimes, it’s about slowing down enough to reassess. To rebuild. To live.
