Gahaya Links
Intricate designs that tell traditional stories from the thousand hills of Rwanda.
Basket weaving has a long tradition in Rwanda, and two sisters, Joy Ndungutse and Janet Nkubana formed Gahaya Links, a small business with great ambitions. They employ over 8,000 rural women who weave intricate baskets that wind up on the shelves of Macy's in New York City.
Gahaya Links is an extraordinary story of two women overcoming all odds to build a export business in Rwanda that is a significant employer of Rwandan women, many of them widows from the 1994 genocide.
Rural women come to Kigali to learn how to weave the Gahaya way.
Every month, a new group of women travel from their villages to live for a week at Gahaya Links to learn the Gahaya way of weaving. When they return to their homes, they take with them the materials and patterns they need to weave baskets and begin providing a new income stream for their families and communities. One of the amazing aspects of this story is how Tutsi and Hutu women often work side by side, thus providing an environment for reconciliation.
Randy Rollinson and Joy Ndungutse working through the financial model.
The GRDP team met with Joy and Janet during the April 2008 Rwanda assessment trip, and Randy Rollinson, a strategy consultant and CEO of LBL Strategies, has committed to them as an executive mentor. He is working closely with Gahaya to audit and make recommendations on their financial model.
For more information on Gahaya Links, download this article from Doing Business.
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