Pitch Studio, a new platform designed to connect Rwandan entrepreneurs with funding and investors, has officially launched, with Season 1 applications now open at pitchstudio.rw.

The initiative is a partnership between Arthur Nation, a Kigali-based creative and events agency founded by media personality Arthur Nkusi, and the Rwanda Broadcasting Agency, the state broadcaster that operates Rwanda Television, KC2, Radio Rwanda, Magic FM, and a network of community radio stations across the country. The Ministry of Youth and Arts Development is also a partner in the program.

According to Cléophas Barore, Director General of the Rwanda Broadcasting Agency, Pitch Studio builds directly on RBA Hafi Yawe, meaning “RBA Close to You,” the broadcaster’s ongoing strategy of engaging citizens across its full range of platforms.

Barore said the agency’s core mandate has always been delivering fast, reliable news to the public, but that Pitch Studio extends that mandate into something new: a platform that can also connect citizens to funding, not just information.

He described the program as a bridge between people who have ambition and the partners who can help them execute it, arguing that supporting even a single founder can help address broader challenges facing the country.

Pitch Studio splits participants into two tracks. The first, called Dreamers, is for people who have a business idea but no capital to act on it and are seeking support that functions as a grant rather than a loan to be repaid.

The second, called Founders, is for people who already run a business or project and need capital to expand it. According to Keza Lisiane Ceresoli, who leads the Pitch Studio project at Arthur Nation, the program rests on three pillars: mentorship for people developing ideas, direct financial support, and a platform for visibility that connects founders with investors.

Ceresoli pushed back on the assumption that a strong idea requires major capital to get started, noting that many viable concepts in Rwanda do not need anything close to 100 million Rwandan francs, the local currency, to begin producing results.

The competition itself runs primarily over WhatsApp and is open to public participation. Each episode pairs two competing Dreamers, who present their projects to the public, which then votes for the stronger pitch; the winner receives funding. For this round, Arthur Nation is providing 15 million Rwandan francs, divided among competitors in the Dreamers category.

The process is hosted by Arthur Nkusi and airs across RBA’s full platform lineup, giving early-stage entrepreneurship the kind of sustained broadcast visibility usually reserved for flagship government programs rather than a single televised pitch event.

For Rwanda’s investment and development-focused readers, the structure matters. Rwanda has built a growing roster of state-linked entrepreneurship platforms in recent years, including the Ministry of ICT and Innovation’s Hanga Pitch Fest and the Ministry of Youth and Arts Development’s Aguka Ideation Program, run with the Tony Elumelu Foundation.

Where those programs have centered on structured training cohorts and lump-sum seed grants awarded at a single event, Pitch Studio is built as a recurring broadcast format, distributing smaller amounts of funding across multiple rounds while using RBA’s reach to keep entrepreneurship visible to the public on an ongoing basis rather than around a single high-profile ceremony.

Registration closes soon. As of this week, organizers indicated only a handful of days remained before applications for the current season close, after which selected participants will be notified by email or phone, with all applicants informed of their status either way.

What happens next will depend largely on turnout and on how compelling the pitches prove to be on air. If early public engagement with the Pitch Studio launch is any indication, the format has generated significant interest, and organizers appear positioned to expand the program into further rounds should Season 1 succeed in producing visible results for the entrepreneurs it backs.