Winning Wednesday with Muhire Louis-Antoine from Rwanda
On this week’s episode of Winning Wednesday, we have our entrepreneur, Muhire Louis-Antoine from Rwanda. Muhire is the CEO of Mergims, a company that enables Rwandans in diaspora to prepay relatives’ basic needs in Rwanda, via mobile apps and a website.
Our entrepreneur received his seed capital and in a year, he is now in the largest FinTech accelerator program in Switzerland. He is currently negotiating with a large Swiss company for partnership. In his words, “things are about to sky rocket, as Mergims has just been nominated as the best FinTech of that program.” Get to meet Muhire in this short interview
TEF: Tell us about Mergims. How did you get the concept for your business?
Muhire Louis-Antoine: I used to live in Canada and it was time consuming and expensive to send money to my cousin in Rwanda. Since, this mutual assistance between diaspora and relatives back home is part of our culture, I decided to make mergims as a platform enabling Rwandan merchants to accepts online payments from abroad. On mergims.com, We are aggregating all essential services providers and manufactures like utility services, school, pharmacies and hospital; and make them accessible by Rwandan in the diaspora, for the benefit of their relatives in Rwanda
TEF: How does your company help the community where it is located?
MLA: Not only are we proving that an African company can go global from its earlier days, as we have transactions from more than 21 countries and 5 different currencies; but also we are creating good job opportunities for the massive African youth graduating in ICT. No, need to add that Rwandan diaspora are delighted by our services and demanding to add more features.
TEF: What was the feeling like in being selected to participate in this programme by TEF?
MLA: Belonging to a dynamic network is the key for any entrepreneur. That privilege used to be for rich and accomplished business men, but Tony O. Elumelu disrupted it from day one by creating a network for determined and diversified African entrepreneur. So success is the only option.
