Rwandan products featured in the 4th Brand and Quality Online Shopping Festival and Quality African Products Online Shopping Festival held in China from 28th April to 12th May 2022. 

Organized by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and hosted on different prominent e-commerce platforms, this festival connected more than 100,000 brands and 1 million e-shops with hundreds of millions of consumers from both China and Africa.  

Speaking during the opening ceremony of this festival, Rwanda’s Ambassador to China H.E. James Kimonyo said that Rwanda’s active participation in China’s digital trade is thanks to the bilateral cooperation agreement on e-commerce signed between Rwanda and China in 2018 during President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Rwanda. 

The implementation of this agreement enabled excellent Rwandan products like coffee, chili and tea to enter the Chinese market through various e-commerce platforms like Taobao, Tmall, jd.com and Douyin among others. “We look forward to expanding and strengthening cooperation with the Government of the People’s Republic of China through the wider Silk Road E-commerce Partnership”, the Ambassador added. 

During this festival, Rwandan products were promoted through livestreaming events organized by Hunan Province, Zhejiang Province and Yiwu Municipality among others. 

On the occasion of Mother’s Day and as part of this festival, on 8th May 2022 Ambassador James Kimonyo was joined by Xinxuan, a Chinese influencer, to promote IGIHANGO, a Rwandan Women’s Coffee brand which has been recently added to the Chinese e-commerce platforms on Kuaishou video platform which attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers. During a few minutes of interactions, hundreds of coffee packets which were available in stock were sold out. 

Currently the Embassy is discussing with various partners about opening online and offline National Pavilions with the aim to increase awareness of Rwandan products in the Chinese market and make it easier for consumers to purchase them. 

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