Didier Nkurikiyimfura
Chief Strategy and Growth Officer, Smart Africa
Didier Nkurikiyimfura is the Head of Technology and Innovation at the Smart Africa Secretariat. Didier took over this position in March 2016, bringing with him over 13-year rich ICT policy, strategy and implementation experience.
From 2012 to early 2016, Didier was the Director General in charge of ICT at the Ministry of Youth and ICT of the Republic of Rwanda, where he was in charge of the country’s ICT Policy and Strategy development and coordination, aiming at transforming Rwanda into a middle-income economy and information-rich society by 2020.
During his tenure, he led the development and implementation of various strategic policies and implementation frameworks for the Government of Rwanda. This includes the “Smart Rwanda Master Plan (2015-2020)” – the ongoing 5-year National ICT Sector Strategic Plan, the National Cyber Security Policy & Strategy as well as the National Broadband Policy & Strategy for Rwanda. He also helped at a conceptual and coordination level the implementation of several strategic projects such the Government Command Center, Rwanda e-Services provisioning platform (Locally referred as “Irembo”), the Analogue to Digital TV Broadcasting Migration, the last Mile 4G LTE Broadband Network roll-out, and the Kigali Innovation City (Technopole), just to name a few.
From 2010 – 2012, he was the head of the IT Security Division, a division of the Rwanda Development Board that plans, implements and coordinates Rwanda’s ICT Security. And prior to that, he worked at the Rwanda Information Technology Authority where he respectively served as Director of the National Computing Center (NCC) and Director of the National Data Center (NDC) during which he led the implementation of a State-of-the-art Tier-III Data Center as well as a secure, scalable, resilient, and service-oriented automated Cloud Computing platform for the Government of Rwanda.
At the beginning of his career, Didier worked at the Computer Science Department of the National University of Rwanda, where he served as Assistant Lecturer, teaching a range of computer science subjects and supervising dozens of students’ undergraduate projects.
He currently serves as Chairman of Board of Directors of the Rwanda Civil Aviation Authority. He also serves at the steering committee of the “Internet for all”, one of the core pillars of the “Global Challenge on the Future of the Internet” initiative convened by the World Economic Forum. In his prior role, he was a member of different strategic steering and planning committees such as the Carnegie Mellon University – Rwanda (CMU-R) Strategic Planning Group, the Rwanda e-Passport Steering Committee, Government of Rwanda – Visa International Steering committee, as well as the Rwanda Enterprise Architecture Steering Committee.
Nkurikiyimfura holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science and Software Engineering from the National University of Rwanda.
He is married with one son and two daughters, and is fluent in English and French.