Rwanda wants to be where Africa-focused capital gets structured and domiciled

In 2020, Rwanda set up the Kigali International Finance Centre (KIFC) to make Kigali the preferred base for investors who want to set up holding companies, funds, trusts, and foundations to deploy capital across Africa.

For Rwanda’s capital city of 1.7 million people, competing with Lagos, Cairo, Nairobi, Mauritius, and the United Arab Emirates as the destination for any investor interested in Africa was a difficult ask for the small city. 

Over half a decade later, Kigali ranks third among Africa’s international financial centres, behind only Casablanca and Mauritius. If you spend some time in the city as I did recently, you might understand that investors would prefer Kigali, despite its small market, because it is predictable. 

Hortense Mudenge, the CEO of KIFC, told TechCabal that Kigali’s rise was deliberate, and it took passing over 22 laws and regulations in roughly five years and establishing the country’s reputation for stability, good corporate governance, compliance, and speed of execution to build a pipeline of 300 investors. 

Kigali offers a 3% corporate income tax rate, 0% withholding tax on dividends, royalties and interest, no capital gains tax, and fast registration (as quick as six hours, one investor told me), all subject to meeting economic substance requirements and demonstrating management and control in Rwanda.

Creating these incentives for investors ties into Rwanda’s government target of financial services contributing 5.2% by 2035 and 11.8% by 2050 to the country’s GDP. Today, the sector contributes less than 3% of its GDP. 

Rwanda’s investor play also extends beyond tax incentives into regulatory infrastructure, as the country is beginning to stitch together a set of fintech licence passporting agreements that could position Kigali as a gateway into multiple African markets.

In February 2025, the Bank of Ghana and the National Bank of Rwanda signed Africa’s first such agreement, allowing fintechs licenced in either country to expand across both markets with streamlined approval processes. A year later, on March 11, 2026, Rwanda and Kenya signed the Kigali Declaration, introducing a similar framework aligned with regional payment integration efforts.

The result is an emerging set of regulatory corridors linking West and East Africa—with Rwanda at the centre. While still early, the model points toward a future where fintechs can operate across multiple markets from a single regulatory base.

In our conversation on the sidelines of the Innovative Fintech Forum in March 2026, Mudenge lays out Rwanda’s playbook for competing with Mauritius and the UAE on investment structuring and how it is not trying to rival Lagos or Nairobi on domestic market depth but on being the place where capital gets domiciled and structured before it flows into those bigger economies.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve publicly said that KIFC spent its first five years in startup mode, laying the foundation and building regulatory frameworks, and is now shifting to scaling impact. You took over in July last year from the founding CEO. What concrete metrics define success for you in this next phase?

You know the death valley for most startups? (The first five years where most startups die.) At least we’ve passed that. That means we have something going on. Now, for the next five years, it’s about growth.

The first concrete metric is really the number of catalytic investors we’re able to attract and have set up shop here. By catalytic, I mean vehicles that deploy capital to advance key projects for the country and vehicles that deploy capital into key projects in the region and the continent, where Rwanda serves as a base.

The second is that we are able to attract key service providers. There is always the component of who is helping and advising. It’s building the funds ecosystem and industry (the catalytic fund managers, fund administrators, the lawyers and advisors). That ecosystem supports investors to operate. How diversified are our financial services actors? If today, Rwanda’s biggest industry is banking, can it be funds in the next five years? We are introducing new industries that offer different services.

The third is how we’ve grown our talent pool. Are we creating high-quality jobs and expertise for our professionals, our young professionals? How many high-quality jobs have been created as a result of these new industries? If we’re able to hit those three, then it is a growth story.

From the event and everything I’ve noticed, it seems like the government’s plan is to attract foreign capital into Rwanda. Where does domestic capital fit into your strategy?

That’s every government’s plan: to attract capital. The Kigali International Financial Centre operates like a hybrid model. Even local investors can access these incentives, as long as they meet the minimum economic substance requirements. This is not only for regional or international investors. 

Rwanda has an even bigger strategy around domestic resource mobilisation. We have the component of savings that allows for reinvestment. We have the capital markets coming up. We want to grow our stock exchange and tap into our diaspora. Our capital markets and stock exchange recently passed a multi-currency, multi-denominated regime and law. That allows for more participation from our diaspora outside of Rwanda.

You also have corporates setting up different projects like corporate bonds and green bonds, because that has now been fashioned for them. For us, it’s about creating a more enabling environment to allow active participation from not just international investors but also our own local players. When we have roadshows elsewhere, we also have roadshows in Rwanda.

There’s a lot of competition on the continent for finance hub status. Lagos, Cairo, Mauritius. What can Kigali do that the others can’t?

I’ll be very blunt. We are never going to compete with bigger economies because we are not wired or set up to do that. We are not going to compete with Nairobi, Lagos, Egypt, or South Africa. Domestically, those are bigger economies, and the offering is very different, because even Lagos, which is coming up, is going to service key stakeholders in Nigeria, because the opportunities are immense.

We are a smaller market. But the unique strength Rwanda has is the global reputation it has, which is well-suited for investment structuring. When we talk about competition, for us, we see it more towards Mauritius or the UAE because right now on the continent, those are the jurisdictions that are the key players for investment structuring. Whether you’re a local, regional, or international player, you want to invest in the continent; it is either you’re going to Mauritius, or you are going to the UAE. If you’re in Kenya or Nigeria, you’re also going there.

That’s really where we sit. And what are investors looking for? Stability, good corporate governance, compliance, and how quickly things are done. Rwanda already has that. What those jurisdictions have more of is a more robust ecosystem because they have the legacy, and they have been at it for some time.

The fact that Rwanda is on a checklist for investors in choosing jurisdictions for domiciliation is already a win. Now it’s about what else we’re meeting on that checklist. That’s where we want to focus our efforts on growing the ecosystem, because once that is in place, it’s a level playing field.

I also want to note: investors will always look to diversify. An investor is never going to put their money in just one place.  I think we are already seeing that.

NIFC was conceptualised in 2014, operationalised in 2022, and has 25 investors. Rwanda was conceptualised in 2020, operationalised in 2021, and has 300 investors. What did you do differently?

There are two things to note. Rwanda is a smaller economy and a smaller population, and things are able to move faster because of that. Once we have that vision and strategy, everyone falls in line — that’s the edge of being a smaller market and economy.

Nairobi is more mature. If you are introducing a change, it requires some time because it is already a thriving regional economy. So we have different geographies, and things move differently.

The second thing is the niche we have carved out. Nairobi is more heavily domestic because there are bigger opportunities there, but it is also servicing the region, largely around headquartering and institutions coming to service the industry. We are more about domiciliation. You have some investors who invest in Kenya but are domiciled here. When you look at attracting investors who are structuring vehicles, vis-à-vis institutions setting up to invest in a country, then you can see higher numbers here, because legal structuring is easier to do. Ultimately, it boils down to the expediency that different countries have.

Are there any additional tax incentives coming this year?

It depends on the need in the sector. Rwanda already has incentives for key priority sectors that we want to invest in and that are also critical to the growth of the economy. The Kigali International Financial Centre is almost like an additional layer to that, especially for investors who want to scale and deploy capital not just in Rwanda, but beyond.

We revised the income tax code, and incentives were offered in terms of facilitating different legal structures. There are exemptions from withholding tax on passive income. You also have a reduced preferential corporate income tax rate of about 3%, depending on the structure and the size of your investment.

The idea is to be competitive with other key financial jurisdictions and centres already serving the continent. What’s important beyond incentives, for us in Rwanda, is economic substance. The idea of incentives is to incentivise investment, but also to incentivise economic growth. Those incentives come with minimal substance requirements that have to be met. Ultimately, it’s to ensure that Rwanda continues to maintain a competitive edge in terms of doing business.

Have you seen results from the latest round of reforms?

I think anywhere there are incentives, there are results, and quick results. What we have seen is definitely great interest from investors (private equity, venture capital, and even institutional investors) across the board in terms of setting up in Rwanda. We have over 300 investors to date who have come as a result.

We set out on this initiative six years ago, and when you look at when reforms were passed, it’s even relatively less than that. When you have that pipeline of investors growing, it shows that we are no longer just proving a concept here. Investors are looking for alternatives, places to diversify their investments.

When you look at the profile of investors, it really cuts across. Our unique value proposition, vis-à-vis a big economy with big bankable projects, is domiciliation, creating a place where you can easily domicile or consolidate your assets.

Most of the investors you find are setting up holding companies to invest across the region. You have those setting up special-purpose vehicles or funds to mobilise capital and deploy it, especially in the bigger economies. And then you have high-net-worth individuals setting up philanthropic initiatives through foundations.

Even at this conference, it was not so much about discussing fintech specifically, but a discussion around wealth management, wealth succession, and what that looks like. We have an emerging number of people moving up the income bracket, and so the conversation is about legacy planning. We have structures in place for trusts to facilitate how families are setting up and how wealth is being managed. There are great investment opportunities on the continent, and it is really about how we all play to our strengths to offer a competitive and enabling environment.

Have these 300 investors been coming gradually over the last six years, or mostly in the last year?

Gradually. As an agency, we were set up in 2020. Most of our laws were passed in 2021 and early 2022. From that time, there’s been a gradual increase. And of course, with the different geopolitics, that also plays into how investors are looking at different markets, which have picked up interest.

It also took time because most people wouldn’t really equate Rwanda with a financial services hub, especially in the region. As we entered the Global Financial Centres Index, that was a game-changer. Now we were being compared with other financial centres, and we have been improving and going up that ranking, which we believe is also a reason for the big shift happening.

For the last year specifically, more than 80 investors have set up. The year before that, relatively less. So it’s the cumulative that is over 300. But a lot more has come in the latter years, because that’s when we had the laws in place, and when those first movers were able to actually set up vehicles. Setting up vehicles doesn’t mean you start immediately, so the activity really came in the last two to three years.

Do you assess what you’ve achieved so far as satisfactory?

I would assess it this way. When you have an emerging financial hub, the biggest part for us when we started was: let’s prove this concept. And Rwanda is very well known for that.

Being roughly five years in, and you already have a pipeline of investors that have set up shop, we have passed over 22 laws and regulations, and Rwanda has joined the Global Financial Centres Index, currently ranked third in Africa, right behind Casablanca and Mauritius. That’s a big deal.

Now, for the next five years, it’s really an ecosystem play. We need to make sure we have a more robust ecosystem and industry to support the investors who are setting up. The great advantage we have is Rwanda’s general reputation. These are factors that already give us an edge. It is about how we position ourselves regionally around financial services.

Sector-wise, is there a particular sector where Rwanda has the edge over Nairobi and others in Africa?

We are really leading the way when it comes to life sciences—biopharma, pharma tech. That’s a big one coming up, and we are positioning to see how Rwanda services the region.

We are also known largely as a proof-of-concept hub. You find a lot of tech investments coming in, allowing different startups to test and pilot with the opportunity to scale. And right now, even during the conference, we are looking at scaling the central banks’ licence passporting. That’s going to be a game-changer.

Another one coming up is tourism. We are seeing a big one around sports, tourism, and creatives, where there are big investments going into that.

And the one we ultimately want is financial services. We have Vision 2050, and the aim is to become a high-income, knowledge-based economy within a span of 25 years. The question is how we achieve that accelerated economic transformation in that short time span. We really have to focus on high-value industries. We are not in the game of scale, but more so the game of quality, because of our geography.

Do you have anything that is uniquely an incentive for startups or fast-growing companies? And secondly, about virtual asset service providers—what is the plan there?

The Cabinet just passed the virtual asset law. Once approved and adopted, it will go through Parliament. The idea is that it unlocks opportunities for different asset classes in virtual form. The regulation will follow suit, and of course, incentives. That’s the state we’re at. It’s something emerging in most economies, so it’s about seeing how we incentivise for this.

For startups and mainly fintechs, they also have incentives. They have their own special tax regime. Even when you look at the Kigali International Financial Centre, there are incentives offered for fintechs. Incentives do not only have to be fiscal. 

You also have support incentives, like the Sandbox Framework. Rwanda’s Central Bank and Capital Markets Authority have set up Sandbox Frameworks to allow them to test and pilot innovative products and services that the regulator is not yet conversant with. There are different cohorts and many startups signing up for it, with regulators there to see and monitor.

For us as the agency, with the pipeline of investors we’re attracting, because they’re setting up firms and vehicles, we now match them to different startups, because that’s an opportunity they can deploy capital into. We play that matchmaking role.

You have a partnership with Singapore’s Global FinTech Network. How does the partnership work, and how does it benefit African startups?

The Global FinTech Network (GFTN) is an arm of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which is the central bank of Singapore. They normally host the Singapore FinTech Festival, a big annual flagship event for Asia and beyond. The Inclusive FinTech Forum is the African equivalent of that.

The idea was born from a conversation. Someone asked the question: Why is it that for startups or investors, most often they go out of Africa to attend conferences, to seek investors, to seek partnerships that actually address African problems? Is there an opportunity to have a forum on the continent? Rwanda and Singapore already had established relationships, so the idea was: could we borrow the success that GFTN has had in Singapore to develop a similar forum here?

The idea is to tackle financial inclusion, because it’s not only specific to Rwanda. It cuts across most countries. We learn from one another, we connect, we build, but ultimately it’s also about the impact of investment. Most of the speakers at the conference are regional and international. The audience speaks to other regions. We build community partnerships with fintech associations across Africa, which collaborate with us on content and on what the conference could offer.

We also work with policymakers. There were different central bank governors here. The discussion is around what reforms we could push for to harmonise, because we all seem to be doing the same thing, but fintechs and founders are having a hard time scaling because of that siloed approach. 

Then it’s the same across academia, talent, careers, founders, and deal rooms. It’s something that is for Africa, but we all find a solution in it.