00:00Zipline is one of Rwanda's biggest tech breakthrough stories what started as a small
00:07drone pilot in Mohanga is now a global logistics leader it launched Africa's fast aerial delivery
00:13network modernizing access to blood supplies and medicine across rural Rwanda today Zipline
00:20operates across five African countries and into food delivery in the US we have so far delivered
00:2720 million doses of vaccine the drone really supports in vaccine delivery because it can
00:33reach even in places where there are no hospitals it can reach in hard to reach places and make sure
00:39that we avoid to have zero-dose children at the heart of Kigali city center is Norsken a startup
00:45hub that is leveraging on Rwanda's testbed ecosystem to launch businesses into East Africa and beyond
00:52Norsken House Kigali supports 300 firms through community networking and access to capital while
00:59its investment vehicle manages 208 million dollar backing high-growth African startups fixer an HR
01:07fintech has raised over a million dollars while piloting at Norsken and Edencare an insurtech
01:13company use Rwanda as a testbed environment to refine its health insurance product before scaling
01:19regionally let's say if it was taking you three years to get your license to operate that is three
01:25years we are not operating if you get it in six hours you can already start to work on your solution
01:33despite the success stories the industry still faces challenges such as limited technical expertise
01:39a small domestic market and the difficulty of funding innovation at an early stage in order to compete with
01:45Africa's tech hubs in South Africa and Kenya Rwanda is capitalizing on the gaps in the market such as an
01:52unfavorable policy environment and tight regulation to attract early stage startups the intention we've
02:00made as a proof of concept hub is to say let's not wait until everything is in place if it's a regulation
02:05that is missing are we able to build one as we test and pilot some of these applications
02:11when zipline arrived in 2016 Africa had never seen drone delivery but rwanda's unique approach to
02:17regulation made it the perfect testing ground there were no drone regulation at the time and our
02:26industry was falling across multiple regulators but rwanda was like if we don't have this regulation
02:33in place we will learn together the bet is paying off in 2023 rwanda received 107 million dollars in
02:41foreign private inflows accounting for 12 percent of the country's total foreign private investment
02:47today the percentage has grown to 18 percent the government hopes to leverage this momentum in its
02:53long-term efforts to establish rwanda as a leading tech hub
02:57what's also most interesting is not that zipline was able to scale out of rwanda what's interesting
03:04is that because of the faith and the bet that we put on zipline we created the right policy and
03:10regulatory environment and today we have over 10 company drone companies rwanda's favorable policy is
03:18moving beyond tech into adjacent sectors authorities stop registering internal combustion engine motorbikes
03:24which account for more than half of all vehicles in the country the green shift is aimed at cementing
03:31demand for early stage e-mobility adoption ampersand and spiro two startups known across east africa for
03:38their growing fleet of e-bikes are setting the example for the race to rev up rwanda's tech hub ambitions
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