r/kigali

Are you guys experiencing the same thing?

Have you noticed how, in this AI era, almost anyone with a PC, an internet connection, and basic coding skills can now build software and turn an idea into a working product?

At first, this sounds like a great thing and in many ways, it is. AI has dramatically lowered the barrier to entry and allowed more people to create solutions for real problems.

But I think there’s a serious downside, especially in Rwanda.

Before AI became this powerful, there was already a relatively small pool of software developers in the local market. Now, suddenly, almost everyone can call themselves a software developer. The result is an extremely crowded market where clients often struggle to distinguish between an experienced engineer and someone who has only recently started "vibe coding."

I’ve seen people presenting themselves as having years of professional experience, only to deliver poorly built, unreliable software. This has also affected how clients perceive developers. Because AI makes software development look so easy, many businesses now assume that building a serious system should be cheap, fast, and straightforward.

The irony is that Rwanda now has more people capable of building software and solving community problems than ever before, but the actual demand for software development still seems relatively small.

A lot of local businesses still rely heavily on manual processes, and when a developer approaches a business offering to build software to solve those problems, it often feels like that same business has already been contacted by dozens of other developers.

So we end up with an interesting contradiction:

More developers. More AI tools. More software being built. But not necessarily more demand or better opportunities for developers.

This makes me wonder: are we heading toward a situation where the ability to build software becomes almost irrelevant, and the real competitive advantage becomes the ability to understand businesses, identify valuable problems, build reliable systems, and actually deliver measurable results?

For those of you building software in Rwanda or operating businesses that hire developers how are you handling this?

Are you experiencing the same thing, or am I looking at the market incorrectly?