Kepler Alumni progress Brings Innovation to Society

Kepler Alumni continue to make a positive impact in their communities through job creation and service provision. 

Meet Vivens Uwizeyimana, our Alumnus from the 2017 cohort who is now the Founder of UmuravaWork, a digital enterprise redefining the future through freelancing, outsourcing, and remote working.  

Vivens graduated in Business Management with a concentration in Logistics and Operations from the Southern New Hampshire University, via Kepler.

UmuravaWork is a win-win solution for businesses and talents. It empowers the performance and growth of companies while creating a new employment model for young African talents.UmuravaWork has completed seventeen (17) projects and 97 single jobs by working with consulting firms and businesses. 

UmuravaWork specializes in various areas of expertise such as Web-Mobile-Software Development, Graphic Design, Videography, Photography, Administrative Assistants, Marketing, Finance, Research, and so much more. 

The well-rounded enterprise provides ready skills to serve both local and global businesses and has so far provided more than 53 jobs to young Rwandan freelancers. 

In 2020, UmuravaWork was selected among ten tech startups to join Westerwelle Startup Haus Kigali. Here, they have developed expertise in business development and working offices and the linkages to investors and funds providers.

UmuravaWork was also selected among ten Rwandan Startups in OVO- Belgian organization through Sustech 4 Rwanda Programme, where they receive practical coaching in various business areas and benefit from the investment. Even towards the end of the program, the enterprise expects to raise between $10,000 to $30,000. 

UmuravaWork continually engaged itself with different partners, including the Ministry of Youth, UNICEF, and AEDV- European Digital Venture Program, which helps tech startups from Africa build sustainable digital business models and link them to investment.

 We caught up with the Founder to learn more about his work and plan through a Q&A session.

1. What inspired you to start UmuravaWork?

It started in 2019 during my college, where I was interested in researching two core subjects. One was creating new digital jobs through freelancing, remote working, outsourcing, and associate consulting in Africa. The second was Technology, Soft & Emerging Skill Development for young Africans. 

After some research, I realized that Africa is still facing problems such as the lack of professional Pan-African Freelance platforms, inefficient talent sourcing, and a mismatch between jobs and skills. The youth unemployment rate is 60%, while the technology and soft skill gap among young people on the African continent also came to my attention.

2. What is your ongoing mission for life?

My ongoing mission for life is to focus on socio-economic development for Africa through Entrepreneurship, technology, and youth empowerment. Daily, I conduct various studies on the problems Africa faces, identifying them and designing the solution for them through UmuravaWork.

3. What is your aspiration for the next five years?

For the next five years, I want to create impactful and successful solutions on the African continent, starting from my beloved country of Rwanda. I aspire to see UmuravaWork among the top four leading freelance remote working platforms on the African continent. I want to see its sister solution, Umurava Academy, among the top Edutech startups for technology, soft, and emerging skills development that primarily targets young people. I also hope to expand our solutions to Finance and Retail in the next five years. 

4. How did Kepler facilitate you in attaining your current entrepreneurial status?

Kepler provided me with a competency-based curriculum that sharpened my mind about having an open mind to the problems and creating solutions for them. Learning through a USA-based system could expose us to the international world. This helped me to benchmark and contextualize them on the African continent.

5. What advice would you offer aspiring entrepreneurs at Kepler? 

I would tell them to have a thirst for learning new things and identifying problems in society because this will help them acquire skills to monetize their solution. In addition, I would tell them to embrace starting small and be more patient, hardworking because, with passion, everything works out. 

6. What contribution does your company offer to society?

We are creating new employment models for our Rwandan Young People through freelancing, remote working, associate consulting, and outsourcing. 

We export African talents to work for global companies through a remote working approach and provide various freelancing jobs and projects. For instance, since we partially started our operations in the last eight months, a few Rwandan young people have made over $1500 through our platform.

We also want to provide EduTech for technology, soft, and emerging skills development, which will create many employment opportunities locally and globally.

Are you Kepler alumni? We would love to hear from you! Reach out to us via communications@kepler.org to let us know about your progress after graduation!