Rwanda, Alibaba set up Africa’s First eWTP hub

The government of Rwanda and Alibaba have agreed to establish the first Electronic World trade Platform hub in Africa and to enable products from eastern African region to reach more than half a billion consumers of Alibaba, reports say.

The deal is expected to spur the economic development and digital economy of Rwanda and ensure trading of Rwandan products and facilitate tourism in the African country.

The Chinese platform will also ensure the improvement in the quality of products for trading in the world’s second economy.

Several brands of Rwandan single origin coffee are reportedly already getting a good response in the world’s largest online product selling platform.

Alibaba’s online travel platform Figgy and Rwandan Development board will work together to promote Rwanda tourism to Chinese customers.

Per the deal, Alibaba will also continue supporting Rwandan entrepreneurs through eFounders Fellowship program. UNCTAD and Alibaba are training 1,000 entrepreneurs and two hundred of them will be from Africa.

Five Rwandan entrepreneurs have already graduated. Alibaba has also organized Global E-commerce Talent Program (GET) which is a five-day course and 50 university lecturers across Rwanda have joined there to deepen their knowledge in e-commerce.