With Rwanda under our feet...: September 2013

This is the market in Byangabo, Rwanda, yesterday, around lunchtime.

Byangabo is about 2 hours north of Kigali on the border of Congo, a small village in the shadow of Karisimbi, a dormant volcano home to mountain gorillas.

I'm sure many of you have been wondering what exactly Ginger has been working on. Sometimes I ask myself the same question. Well, the mVisa mobile phone payment system is up and running, and the big marketing push is happening right now throughout September. For Ginger, this week has been one of the biggest payoff weeks since we moved here - getting their product out to the customers that are so far from most of civilization. Here are many of them in the picture above. These are the people that we basically moved here to serve.

Hundreds upon hundreds showed up to the travelling acting show for mVisa, and then signed up during and after the show. Below is another picture she got of the semi-truck that converts into an elevated stage, full of actors, comedians and MCs. This is how marketing works in rural Rwanda, and in plenty of other places on the continent. The truck pulls up, the service tents go up, and shortly after lunch in the market area (the best place to be sure lots of people will show up anyway), the show starts - they use actors role-playing how they sign up, how they use it and how they benefit from mVisa. How would you write a script that shows people how to get this thing that becomes a bank account on their phone?

Very happy faces around here, despite more hours on the road to get to some of these places. We are so proud, Ginger!