Alibaba Group co-founder Jack Ma
Rwanda will on Wednesday, October 31, sign a partnership deal with Alibaba Group – China’s biggest e-commerce company, Rwanda Development Board (RDB) has announced.
“Greetings. We hope you will join us for a special announcement of a new partnership between the Government of Rwanda and Alibaba Group.
President Kagame and Alibaba Group Executive Chairman will be in attendance,” and Email sent to KT Press reads.
The Hangzhou-based Alibaba Group runs Taobao – an online shopping site, and Tmall – a facilitator of online stores.
The group had revenue of 250 billion yuan ($37.8 billion) in the year to March 2018, according to Bloomberg Billionaires index.
In September this year, President Paul Kagame met Jack Ma in New York, United States of America during a reception hosted by NBA on the sidelines of UN Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development meeting.
A year before, Jack Ma was in Rwanda to attend youth Connekt Africa Summit – a continental youth gathering.
At the summit, Ma, who announced his retirement from the group in September this year, announced 4 groundbreaking projects for Rwanda and Africa.
On the first project, Jack Ma invited 200 African young entrepreneurs to work at Alibaba headquarters with the aim of gaining experience in fields including; e-commerce, Artificial intelligence and Internet.
With experience of working at Alibaba headquarters, he said, “They will come back to Africa to develop their business and help others grow their businesses.”
The Second Project – the Chinese billionaire said Alibaba will work with Universities in Africa and governments to train specific courses including; Internet, Artificial intelligence, and e-commerce.
Jack Ma also announced the third project was partnership between Alibaba and Paradise Foundation of China – aimed at dealing with promoting and supporting Environmental conservation efforts in Africa especially protecting elephants and other precious animals.
In the Fourth and last project, Jack Ma said he wants to show his confidence in Africa and therefore pledged to invest in youth.
“I wanna show my confidence in Africa…so I start with my foundation to Africa entrepreneurship fund to support young entrepreneurs to realize their dreams,” he said then.
Meanwhile, a source told KT Press that the latest deal to be signed between Rwanda and Alibaba could be in the area of e-Commerce where the group will help generate market for Rwandan exported products including handcrafts, coffee and tea.
