On May 6, 2022 AIPI (Access International Partnership in IT) launched a project between Rwanda ICT Chamber and the German IT-based Association Bundesverband IT-Mittelstand e.V. (BITMi) together with the experts from GS1 Germany. It started as a community breakfast session with the flagship companies who volunteered to be part of this GS1 Rwanda establishment journey. This meeting was held at ONOMO Hotel Kigali. The main purpose of this meeting was to bring flagship companies with business and legal experts to collect inputs and feedback to be captured in application documents required for GS1 Rwanda application.

Picture 1: A team of flagship companies after the breakfast meeting

The represented flagship companies were 10 including Inyange industries, Prime Cement, Aux Delices Honey, etc… With the facilitation of both legal and business specialists, there were positive discussions about the progress of the Road to GS1 Rwanda initiative. Also, during the meeting we reviewed some of the key highlights discussed, including the importance of bringing this organization to Rwanda.

In this meeting, participants addressed some of the challenges they face in their business especially when it comes to the stock of the barcodes, the exportation standard and traceability of their products. Currently most companies buy the necessary barcodes from GS1 Kenya and South Africa, but there are always problems to get them and they are quite expensive. 

Picture 2: Ongoing community breakfast being facilitated by a business development expert

On the other hand, the presentations indicated how GS1 is a solution to their problems in general,  and how this organization will be able to offer various possibilities not only to make the value chain more transparent, but also to expand it . In addition, the codes offer the possibility to position oneself more easily on the global market. Besides, small-scale farmers could also be included in the value chain through their own codes.

In this initiative of setting up GS1 Rwanda organization, Rwanda ICT Chamber together with BITMi had so far hosted two workshops and one community breakfast which brought together businesses, government institutions to help business cycle in general to identify national business export priority gaps. 

According to the investors’ opinions, they also recognized the value of this project and how it will support them in navigating their business nationally and internationally easily. A second community breakfast meeting is scheduled on Friday, September 16th where we will discuss more regarding the GS1 Rwanda establishment process – basing on inputs collected in the previous meeting. And as we did in the previous meeting all Inputs, feedback and suggestions will be collected and recorded in respective documents that will be submitted to GS1 Global as part of the application requirements.