Collaborate & learn
Work on real open source projects with developers who'll review your pull requests and tell you when they smell off.
A community of Rwandan software developers — maintaining open source libraries, shipping locally-rooted software, studying AI together, and creating paid work for one another.
A shared WhatsApp community, informal meetups in Kigali, code review on real production work. Whether you're starting out or have been shipping for years, there's a chair for you.
Work on real open source projects with developers who'll review your pull requests and tell you when they smell off.
Informal hack nights, talks, and workshops — mostly in Kigali, sometimes online. Nothing fancy. Pizza optional.
Ask the dumb question, share the elegant fix, write the post-mortem. Active WhatsApp groups for help, hiring, ideas, and AI.
Two production projects, fully owned by the community. We list real impact only — no inflated metrics.
| project | type | detail | links |
|---|---|---|---|
Rwanda Locations LibraryTypeScript library covering Rwanda's full administrative tree — provinces, districts, sectors, cells, villages. |
open source · mit | 14,837 villages indexed | GitHub npm |
ItegureWeb & USSD platform built with the Rwanda Education Board to keep parents informed during COVID-19 school closures. |
partnership · reb | en · kin · fr multi-language, ussd & web | Visit site |
Open source work shipped by individual community members. We list — we don't gate-keep.
| project | by | detail | links |
|---|---|---|---|
text-db-query-aiSecure LLM-powered converter that turns natural language into database queries. Multi-ORM support, SQL-injection prevention, access controls, row-level filtering. |
ai · llm
by @jnkindi
|
TypeScript mit · npm published | GitHub npm |
Submit it — if it's open source and relevant, we list it here. No curation gate.
AI is the area the community is most actively exploring right now. Not as hype — as a real engineering shift that's already changing the kind of products our members build. We're studying it together, not pretending we've already mastered it.
A recurring informal session where members work through papers, evaluate models, share prompts, and walk each other through what they're building — hands-on demos, not slide decks.
Most foundation models barely speak Kinyarwanda. Members are building and evaluating models for African languages, and publishing the datasets along the way.
RAG over local datasets, USSD bots backed by LLMs, AI-assisted code review, classifiers for African product data — tools we use ourselves, then publish.
When teams hire DevRW for software work, that revenue funds the libraries we keep open, the events we host, and the developers we onboard. There is no separate sponsor.
Community developers build production applications with modern tooling. Every paid project funds the open source side and creates onboarding ground for newer engineers.
We connect companies with community members for full-time, contract, and project-based work — at fair rates, both sides.
Revenue from professional work funds the upkeep of the Rwanda Locations Library and any future tools the community adopts.
No polished mission statement. These are the working principles.
Everything we can publish, we publish. The Rwanda Locations Library exists because the data should be free.
Decisions happen in WhatsApp messages, not in a board room. Anyone can propose a project; anyone can review it.
USSD where SMS is what people use. Kinyarwanda where Kinyarwanda is the working language. AI fine-tuned for African languages, not just English.
We're a small group with two real projects. No inflated download counts, no fake testimonials. Numbers on this site are the real numbers.
Community work is voluntary; client work is not. When we place a developer, the developer gets paid first, then the community.
TypeScript, tests, documentation. Pull requests get reviewed before they ship. Deliberate, durable, dull in the best way.
We work with a handful of organisations a year. Itegure — built with the Rwanda Education Board during COVID-19 — is the project we're most proud of.
DevRW shipped a multi-language USSD and web platform that reached parents across the country when schools were closed. The work was fast, considered, and locally aware.
Open source tools built for African data are still rare. Having the country's administrative tree as a typed, documented npm package saves us a real chunk of engineering time.
We read everything. Real replies, usually within a working day.