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Comment by joelhaasnoot | Hacker News Reader

This is awesome! Grew up abroad and this seems like a great opportunity.

Was it easy to get a work permit / visa for Rwanda?

Rwanda has a classification specifically for technology entrepreneurs. It's a 3-year visa and if you are a qualified software practitioner, I don't foresee you having difficulty getting a permit to start a software company here. They also pride themselves on same-day business registration.

https://www.migration.gov.rw/services/permits/temporary-perm...

A smart move. How common are those sort of visas in developing countries?

My main concern in this question is that I've heard of a growing concern in East Africa that foreigners are taking jobs/money out of the country instead of investing. From what I've heard, Rwanda sounds perfect, though Kenya has pretty amazing infrastructure too. Kenya is however a lot more dangerous than Rwanda sounds.

I've certainly heard some of that, but I don't think it applies quite as much to tech entrepreneurs -- and I've seen more evidence of that in say, Kenya. If you are coming here to build a software company, I would be surprised if Rwanda's arms weren't opened pretty wide.

At this point, Nairobi has more going on in it's tech scene and certainly a more mature market to sell into, but you are right, it's definitely not as safe and transparent as Kigali.

I don't know how common these sort of visas are the world over, but Chile also has a pretty innovative approach to attracting tech entrepreneurs.

http://startupchile.org/

And I assume no trouble renewing at three years, then?

I just renewed mine this week without any trouble, but of course YMMV.

We are both college dropouts, so the first go around took a bit of convincing, but since we had a pretty lengthy work history we convinced them in the end. After that it has been smooth sailing, Rwanda is pretty friendly to foreign investment in general.

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