Rwanda opens up the
digital image processing market

A digital pioneer in its infancy

Rwanda has been positioning itself as a pioneer in digital technologies for years. Hundreds of public services can be used fully online and almost 95 per cent of the country’s territory is covered by 4G LTE network. Over 7,000 km of fibre optic cables have been laid demonstrating potential investors that Rwanda is an attractive and excellently connected location for their digital business.

Nevertheless, the digital economy of the East African country is still in an early growth phase. In 2022, the information and communication technology (ICT) sector contributed only 2 per cent to Rwanda's gross domestic product. With close to 15,000 people, only 0.4 per cent of the employed population worked in this sector in the same year. For the coming years, however, comparatively rapid growth is predicted for the ICT sector, which is becoming increasingly important for the small country. 

Within the ICT sector, the digital image processing sector in Rwanda is particularly small. While countries like the Philippines or India have already gained international recognition in the image processing market, Rwanda is still in an early stage of growth. So far, the technical know-how and qualified personnel in the country are scarce, although there is demand from media houses and for international service exports. In order to fully exploit the employment and innovation potential of this sub-sector of the Rwandan digital economy, young talents and companies need the right support.

IT talent as the cornerstone of the image processing sector

The company Schnell Media provides digital imaging services to online retailers, publishers, photo studios and many other clients in the fashion, food, automotive and other industries. In addition to the German headquarters and the company’s presence in Asia, Schnell Media has decided to establish a subsidiary in Rwanda in 2021 to provide more image editing services for the international market.

Invest for Jobs supported Schnell Media in training qualified personnel for its Rwandan branch and for the Rwandan ICT sector in general. To systematically address skills gaps in the long term and support Schnell Media's market entry in Rwanda, Invest for Jobs facilitated a strategic partnership with the Rwanda Development Board (RDB) as part of the project.

Together with RDB, which ran the ICT Innovation Center in Kigali until 2023, when the management was taken over by Rwanda Polytechnic, Schnell Media developed a curriculum for image editing to train job seekers and promote IT start-ups. Young people were then trained in Kigali for a period of 3 months. Afterwards, the tested course programme was integrated into the ICT Innovation Center's teaching offer so that it can be replicated to promote more young talent for future employment in the field of digital image editing. In addition to industry-specific skills such as retouching, masking, cropping, vectorising and the use of relevant software, the trainees were taught further practical IT and language skills that are essential for their employability in the labour market.

For Rwanda's young ICT sector, the programme offered the chance to tap into a promising niche market. In the future, the goal is for more interested investors from the image processing sector to set their sights on Rwanda to make use of the newly available talent in the country. 

Rwanda’s image processing sector is emerging

Since the start of the project and the simultaneous opening of the Rwandan branch in May 2021, Schnell Media has developed a curriculum that was integrated into the teaching programmes of the Rwandan partner institution Rwanda Polytechnic and its five colleges.

As part of the project, which officially ended in September 2024, a total of 161 people successfully completed the training. Of these, 92 were employed by Schnell Media, while 8 others have secured positions with other Rwandan enterprises.  

The training programme will be continued by the ICT Innovation Centre to open up new opportunities for future trainees and provide much-needed skilled workers for investors and customers in the sector.

Kai Sieverding, Production and Expansion Manager Southeast Asia and East Africa at Schnell Media, is confident about the future of the company in Rwanda: “Invest for Jobs provided decisive support when we opened our subsidiary in Rwanda, enabling us to train the local workforce we needed. Rwanda will be our biggest and our main subsidiary in the future”. 

This project to strengthen the ICT sector in Rwanda was supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) within the framework of the Special Initiative "Decent Work for a Just Transition".