Businesses have been forced to act fast in response to help others suffering through the crisis while attempting to stay on solid ground financially.

At the same time, keeping jobs has become as uncertain as job hunting. Even harder for fresh graduates and young people who find themselves between a rock and a hard place when the career world is in shambles.

Having to stay home for long with zero prospects of employment, a window of creativity opened for some. The pandemic has pushed aspiring business people to the online world and the money it offers. Rwanda Today compiled four businesses that were inspired by Covid-19 new needs and ideas.

Ntiza.co, founded by Nadia Mutoni

Ntiza.co is the first crowd rental platform in Kigali. If you need a one-time use of a kitchen appliance, a vacuum packaging machine, a camera, a car or a ploughing tractor, you pay a certain amount of money and get them delivered to you in Kigali right away.

Mutoni, 34, had just arrived in Rwanda from Belgium when Covid-19 hit. As a rookie in a locked-up city, she needed a platform where newbies like her would ask questions and help each other while staying at home. Ntiza.co website receives a couple of renting requests every day.

Six months in, Nadia sees this as a potential long-term profitable business. If it wasn’t for Covid-19, ntiza.co would not be in existence.

Quick.rw founded by Prince Hoffman Banamwana

Banamwana, 27, had a booming car wash business before the pandemic struck. He had just opened branches in Kigali and landed a funding partnership when Covid-19 hit. It all closed down in a few months after the pandemic.

Looking for an alternative source of survival, he used lockdown time to research and build a real estate website that has enabled Rwf500 million worth of transactions since December 2020. It required an initial capital of Rwf62,000. He has extended his online presence and has helped people from different countries to buy, rent and sell houses and plots in Rwanda. His biggest market is the Rwandan diaspora.

He never thought the real estate business would blossom in the middle of an economic recession. Quick.rw is a long-term reliable business for him, thanks to the pandemic.

 iTangazo.africa, founded by Joannitta Uwamahoro

iTangazo.africa homepage shows images of lost ID cards and numbers offering rewards to whoever finds them. The platform lists lost and found items, contacts and rewards. It also has a part of online shopping with products ranging from cosmetics to land and properties. Researching and spending time on the Internet during lockdown and travel bans, Uwamahoro and friends leveraged time and skills and founded the platform that now has around 750 registered businesses looking to reach customers via iTangazo.africa. Uwamahoro, 24 and her team would now be interning, job hunting or employed somewhere else if Covid-19 had not pushed them to be innovative.

e-mart.rw, founded by Richard Migambi

Migambi owns a media company that specialises in building websites and apps. When Covid-19 hit, he redirected resources and efforts to meeting other needs that came with the pandemic. He founded e-mart.rw, an online shop that offers free delivery services in Kigali.

To his surprise, the business picked up in just weeks. He gained traffic especially during lockdowns and travel bans. He has employed a team of 10 young people to operate the shop. A maximum of 25 orders that can bring in as much money as Rwf400,000, are received every day.