Twelve women-led business owners have pitched bankable business ideas that will stand a chance to win the 8th edition of the BK Urumuri Initiative, which has set aside Rwf25million interest free funding this year.
The BK Urumuri Initiative is an annual edition organised by the Bank of Kigali (BK) Foundation, in partnership with Inkomoko, with an aim of empowering Rwandan entrepreneurs.
This year, the edition came with a six-month business accelerator programme designed specifically to support 25 visionary women entrepreneurs in Rwanda, underlining the theme for 2024: “Empowering Women Entrepreneurs”.
Out of 25 project ideas, only 12 business ideas were selected as finalists and were on November 14th, 2024 given a platform to showcase how their businesses will empower Rwandans and contribute to its economic growth.
Five winners will be selected in the upcoming grande finale which will witness winners walking away with interest free loans (between Rwf4million and Rwf6million) from the Bank of Kigali Plc with a three- year repayment period.
The 12 business ideas are in various fields including; agriculture and agro-processing (fortified foods and chili pepper among others), deaf and dumb translation service, hygiene and sanitation, waste management, decoration, animal feed processing, and fashion designing among others.
Before the jury, the competitors showed the judges how their project works, where it works, a marketing plan and how sustainable the business can be but also its impact to the economy.
The five finalists (to be selected) will be announced in two-weeks’ time from now. They will be awared under the three pillars of BK Foundation-which include; education, innovation and environmental protection.
Helle Dahl Rasmussen, Director of Business Growth Services at Inkomoko, told the contestants that those whose projects will fail should not be discouraged, but use their skills as a good opportunity to be motivated to do better.
“Keep going if it does not work out now, it will the next time. Don’t give up, keep putting in efforts. You have good projects, each of you has a good project, someday you will get benefits, keep working and don’t get discouraged, and we will continue to help you in your journey, we are with you .” Rasmussen said.
The management of BK Foundation says that empowering Rwandan women entrepreneur in development activities is usually a key factor in its mission, which is one of the reasons why, this year, they paid more attention to women’s business development in order to impact on the community in an urgent manner.
Pascal Nkurunziza, the Programs Manager Director at BK Foundation, said that this year’s competition focused on women-led projects only, to make the women entrepreneurs more daring and self-sustainable.
“This year, I would like to say that this was the main goal of the BK Foundation, to encourage women to compete equally as their male counterparts. This is the vision of the BK Foundation and it is not just this year, because we will continue doing so,” Nkurunziza said.
BK Urumuri Initiative, which started in 2017, is a program that was launched in 2017, when the Bank of Kigali celebrated its 50th anniversary, with the aim of helping young entrepreneurs develop their projects that can result in strong business in the future.
BK Urumuri is one of the initiatives supported by the BK Foundation and has since offered interest free loans to start-ups (more than 55 entrepreneurs, including 31 women) amounting to more than Rwf234.5million.
