Interview: The Rwandan student who built mobile application

No odds could deter his aspirations to contribute to technological advancement. Sangwa Rwabuhihi’s work with Mercedes-Benz in IT process modelling while completing his masters’ course in software engineering just blended well with his great desire to build lifestyle mobile application.The New Times’ Edwin Musoni interviewed Rwabuhihi.Below are the excerpts.TNT: Tell us about yourself?SR: My name is Sangwa Rwabuhihi, I live in Stuttgart, Germany, and I work for Mercedes-Benz in IT process modeling while complete my masters in software engineering.TNT: You are said to be the first Rwandan to build stylist mobile application, is that true?SR: Yes, after some experience working on apps and touch screen user interfaces, I decided with two of my colleagues to launch Hino Designs, that specialises in designing user experiences for touch screens, desktop and mobile apps. We also own apps that we manage ourselves, and the first one, which we published on May 5, is StyleGuide Afropolitan.TNT: What is StyleGuide Afropolitan?SR: It is a tablet and Smartphone app that serves as a guide to Afropolitans.Afropolitan combines the words African and cosmopolitan to describe a contemporary generation of Africans. Africans are proud of their roots, and their lifestyle is a combination of influences.The desire to express our identities as can be found in the way we dress, we think and interact with our world. StyleGuide Afropolitan is an app that comes at the dawn of this incredible African renaissance, a time where the very definition of the word “lifestyle” is being redefined by us for ourselves. StyleGuide Afropolitan will take you to those events and places that are the forefront of this fascinating transformation.TNT: How exactly does it work and what does it feature?SR: I have to say that as of now this is purely a Rwandan application with features of what happens in Rwanda with a continental ambition. Whether you are a frequent traveler or a local resident, this app should be your daily companion in any major African city. It basically answers three questions; what are the events happening around you? What places are worth being discovered, here we mean restaurants, cafes, shops and nightclubs, for instance; and finally how should I dress in terms of the fashion standards and codes?Instead of offering long listings, we make sure we select few events and places that really match the Afropolitan mindset.The app is intuitive and extremely easy to use. Beyond the two sections “Events”and “Places”, the third section “Styles” offers you daily fashion tips under the subsection “Today” as well as local fashion standards and codes under the subsection “Basics”.Our team of contributors is made up of fashion professionals and bloggers. The interesting thing about the app is that you don’t need to select a country or a city, it is automatically updated as soon as you land in Libreville or in Nairobi or any other African city.Keep in mind that a mobile app does not offer you as much information as a website, but it is very much practical since it makes you access quick, updated and reliable information you can go through in less than five minutes. If you do have a tablet, I would say it is the best way to start your day, with a glass of fresh juiceTNT: How much did you invest in creating this application?SR: Well, the good thing about software is that, it costs you more effort than financial resources. There are certainly costs for registering the app in the Google Play Store and costs for servers, but it is much more a matter of time you invest. The tricky part with apps today, is that you need to make sure your interface is okay for all screen sizes, and all orientations (both portrait and landscape) that can definitely cost a couple of sleepless nights.Otherwise, we have to deal with a lot of organisational issues; we are currently building a network of contributors all over the continent, and developing dozens of partnerships.Language is also an issue since the app is built in English but we need to have it in French, Portuguese and Arabic as well to reach out to the entire Africa. The interesting part is, we have a Kinyarwanda version but my wish would be to have Swahili, Hausa or Yoruba– these are our first languages.TNT: Who have been your major partners in realising this?SR: I can only say that we are currently completing deals with major actors in the entertainment and lifestyle business. Sponsored adverts are welcome to the app, in different formats, and they will be indicated as such.At the end of the day, it is important for us to keep some level of independence in our choices. We don’t want to offer you a listing of only the restaurants which have paid to be posted, but also those that really match our philosophy and these restaurants are not necessarily those which have the most money to spend on advertisement/marketing. We rely for the moment on our contributors and different other sources, but we would like in the long term to have professionals working with us.Wouldn’t you prefer to have the opinion of a chef to help you chose a good restaurant? We don’t want to be just another business directory.TNT: How did you come up with the idea, basically what inspired you?SR: The African continent is going through an incredible economic and cultural renaissance. I like to think that we now have three identities: the one of our own country, an “African identity” and a global identity.I insist on differentiating our countries. I think we are too often using the terms “African fashion” or “African food” in a very simplistic way. Wax prints? oh that’s Africa! Ask people in Ethiopia if they wear that.Ethiopian fashion is not Senegalese fashion. And, generally, these very general concepts are stopping people from doing real research, and you end up having everyone designing the same and call it African.Don’t get me wrong, I love wax prints and they are good for mainstream fashion that can be exported outside Africa, but I believe we can go beyond that.I was born in Senegal, which is in West Africa; I later grew up in Cameroon, Central Africa, before living in Rwanda, East Africa. I can remember going from one country to another and it was a challenging experience, a lot was different. I was also lucky to travel to 10 other African countries, including South Africa and Algeria, so I guess I have covered most regions and that was always a different experience.I guess that’s what inspired me to create an app that is at the same time country- specific, “African” and global.TNT : What does it require for someone to use this application?SR: All you need to have is a Smartphone or a tablet running on Android. Most devices besides Blackberrys and Apple products do run with Android. We are considering versions for these other platforms for sometime this summer but we can’t announce anything more specific at this moment. I highly recommend everyone the app on a tablet, the user interface experience is much superior, as you can see on our screenshots. This is most probably the first Rwandan tablet app, in the sense that it was designed with a special consideration for tablets.TNT: Have you had any assistance or response or encouragement coming from Rwanda?SR: The media and entertainment professionals in Rwanda that we have been talking to are excited about this, and I am confident the sponsorship deals we are negotiating will be successful.Like I said, we are interested in working with professionals of the lifestyle and entertainment scene in the near future, especially professionals in gastronomy.Rwandan fashion designers are also welcome to work with us to promote their latest creations, as they can reach with us, a much broader audience on the continent.TNT: when will the app be functional and what did it take you to have it listed on Google Play Store?SR: The app shall be released on May 5 [yesterday] in the Google Play Store, which is the new name for the Android Market. All you need is to open the “Play Store” app on your device, and in enter StyleGuide Afropolitan the search textbox; it should be there to be downloaded. For all our frequent travellers, please keep in mind that the app will only work in Rwanda for the month of May.From June, a couple of other countries of the region will be activated. We should have a gradual evolution in terms of the content, as it takes time to obtain reliable sources and build networks outside Rwanda.We really want user feedback to guide our next releases. None of the famous apps we know today was built in one day, so there will be improvements and I am confident our users will be part of the experience.I actually wanted to mention that Kenya was put on a map through, among other things, such apps as M-Pesa and Ushaidi, it is time for Rwanda to have apps with a pan-African ambition, I hope StyleGuide Afropolitan will open the doors for more such Rwandan initiatives.

National

Interview: The Rwandan student who built mobile application