Sweden-based media and telecommunications company Millicom has formed a tech incubator in Rwanda that will develop scalable businesses in which Millicom can take an equity stake.
The incubator, to be known as Think, will act as the base for the successful applicants chosen from a process soon to be announced by Millicom’s local subsidiary, Tigo. Over the past year Tigo has launched mobile and wi-fi bus payments in Rwanda’s capital of Kigali, as well as what it claims is the world’s first cross-border mobile money transfer service with integrated currency conversion.
Millicom will provide seed funding to the winners, as well as training and coaching programmes and access to Tigo’s resources for product research and development.
Hans-Holger Albrecht, the chief executive officer of Millicom, said: “Rwanda is a great place to do business. We know it has some extraordinary local talent whose skills and ingenuity we want to support. We are looking forward to driving the digital revolution with talented youth in all our Tigo operations in Africa.”