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Meet The Young Master Minds Behind Rwanda’s First Drones Whose New Company Is Set To Take Africa Over!

from: 12 . 01 . 16
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At the 10th annual gorilla naming ceremony – Kwita Izina in Kinigi, Musanze in July 2014, one thing stood out: the presence of a drone camera hovering above the crowd and capturing images of events as they unfolded.

As things were then, not many in the crowd even knew it was a drone camera, confessing they were witnessing the spectacle for the very first time.

So the simple conclusion was that it was a “small helicopter” flying overhead for God-knows-what-reason.

We were to later learn that this was actually an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), or simply “drone”, hauled in by a Nigerian TV crew to capture superior aerial images from the ceremony.



Needless to say, it was the most talked-about thing at that year’s gorilla naming ceremony.

Commonly known as a drone, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard. The drone is controlled either autonomously by onboard computers, or by the remote control of a pilot on the ground.

In July 2014, the same month that the drone made its first (and so far only) appearance at Kwita Izina or indeed a public event in Rwanda, CHARIS Unmanned Aerial Solutions was founded as the first unmanned aerial vehicle company in Rwanda.

An apparent act of co-incidence, considering that CHARIS is Rwandan founded and owned, with no links whatsoever to the drone that mesmerized Kwita Izina in 2014.

Located at the Solace Ministries complex in Kacyriu, CHARIS is the brainchild of an enthusiastic and tech-savvy young Rwandan, Rutayisire Eric Muziga, its founder and CEO.

Rutayisire holds a Masters of Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in the US.

It was while studying electrical engineering at the University of Minnesota that Rutayisire was first introduced to drone technology:

He was introduced to it by one of his professors, who worked for a drone company. This professor would soon become his mentor, encouraging the young engineer about the huge potential that the sector presented.

“That’s how I saw and seized an opportunity in the UAV industry. The idea was to have in Africa or Rwanda for that matter, people doing real engineering work. That’s my passion. I want to see opportunities created for young Rwandans who are coming from engineering school,” Rutayisire explains, adding: “That is why I decided to not do it in the US, but to bring it to my own country.”

Upon finishing school, he returned to Rwanda and teamed up with two like-minded people; his sister, Ingabire Muziga Mamy, and Segore Teddy.

Teddy is a fresh graduate of Electrical Engineering from the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), and upon graduation in 2015, joined CHARIS.

“Eric is my childhood friend, and so when he returned from the US and approached me with the idea of starting up a drone company, I took it up immediately because I was doing Electrical Engineering at KIST as well,” he explains:

“It has really widened my engineering knowledge because now I can delve into the more practical aspects of engineering to compliment the theory I learnt from school.”

While Ingabire Muziga Mamy is the company’s Managing Director and studied Bio tech science at a University in South Africa:

“Eric is my younger brother. One time he just came home for holidays and started telling us about his plans to start a drone company here. Even before that, from a young age, we knew he was destined to be an engineer, because he always liked to create certain things on his own,” she explains.

“For me it was quite a new experience, and adventurous too. It’s not been a year yet, and looking at some the projects already done so far, it’s amazing.”

Watch the drone take a short flight!




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