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Jemima Kakizi, a Rwandan visual artist, curator and the founder of the Impundu Arts platform, is pioneering a new era in the Rwandan art sector. She is one of the women at the centre of a value shift impacting art in Rwanda.
The Museum of Modern African Art (MoMAA) 2026 African & Diaspora Art Market Outlook, revealed that female artists command more than 52% of total auction turnover, effectively dismantling long-standing barriers, but in Rwanda, women hold only 31% of formal employment in the arts and recreation sector, according to the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR) Labour Force Survey (2024).
Kakizi is on the path to forging a path for women artists to thrive in the Rwandan art sector.
“It all started because it was also hard for me to get opportunities as a woman artist and make a living, you know, from my art. I thought that coming together would, give us more visibility and also, when I started doing art, I think I knew, like, three women who were practicing, which is, like, a very small number. I always asked myself, where are the women artists?” she explained.
This isolation led her to take action and seek out fellow women artists, particularly those who hadn’t imagined their work could live beyond their homes. Through her platform, she bridges that gap, connecting emerging voices with the buyers and collaborators they need to succeed in the country’s art sector.
Her mentorship sessions provide practical tools, such as pricing and portfolio building, that are rarely accessible to those outside traditional circles. For women balancing family life with creative ambition, this support is often what turns a personal passion into a sustainable career.
Ethiopian artist Tsega Zewde Rago is one of the women artists who have benefited from Kakizi’s community for women artists. She is a graduate of the prestigious Alle School of Fine Arts and Design at Addis Ababa University. When her family moved to Kigali about two years ago, she sought a creative shift and taught herself to tuft using online videos.
She had been an active member of the art community in Addis Ababa and was eager to collaborate with artists in her new home. After several futile attempts to connect, she was introduced to Jemima Kakizi.
Credit: Alice Kayibanda, Bird Story Agency.
“I met Jemima when I first moved to Kigali. I didn’t really know any other artists; I wasn’t familiar with the galleries or how exhibitions were put together in this country. And that is how we met. She brought five East African women together to organise a joint exhibition. After that, I essentially became part of the local art scene,” she said.
This vision took centre stage in “The Testimony of Now,” an exhibition Kakizi curated at Kigali’s SimpleLiving Art Gallery in December 2025. The concept, born during a residency in Egypt, explores how to pin down the fleeting moments of modern life before they slip away. She reunited with East African artists like Tsega Zewde Rago, who contributed conceptual pieces that grappled with the question: “How do we archive the present before it disappears?”
Mucyo, a young artist whom Kakizi was showing around the exhibition, said she was excited to find a space that centres women and looks into their experiences.
“To be able to find a space that is actually centring women and looking into their experiences, I think, is something that is quite precious and needs to not only happen more often but actually needs to be encouraged a lot. Because I don’t think we see that quite often. More often than not, it’s like one artist, one woman artist, and then, like, seven men. And to be able to have a space that has, like, more than, like, five or six women, I’m just—I’m elated to see that,” said Mucyo.
Ademola Adeshina, a Nigerian curator who established Kigali’s SimpleLiving Art Gallery in May 2025, describes Kakizi as a “force to be reckoned with,” particularly for her “boots-on-the-ground” advocacy, such as navigating the logistics for an artist living upcountry to ensure her work reached the capital for the December exhibition.
The Rwanda Development Board (RDB) and the Ministry of Youth and Arts suggest that the country’s creatives contribute between 2% and 3% to the economy. The government’s target is 5% by 2030.
Kakizi said that achieving that goal requires moving from the typical wildlife drawings toward conceptual work that incorporates contemporary culture and attracts local collectors.
“When I see that artists are able to make a living from their art, that’s the first one. The second would be to see more art spaces in Kigali and Rwandans being part of it. Because now things are changing and I’m very happy to see that Rwandans are buying even artworks, they are collecting. They are not many, but it’s something that has started, which wasn’t there when I started doing art.”
Kakizi is helping to reframe the conversation about Africa’s art industry and ensure that those who create earn the accolades and revenues they deserve by highlighting the art of established and emerging women.
Credit: Alice Kayibanda, Bird Story Agency.
