Kigali Builds: Africa Free Routing Wraps Lightning Developer Bootcamp in Rwanda, Next Stop Dar es Salaam

Africa Free Routing’s Lightning Developer Bootcamp in Kigali, Rwanda wrapped up this week. Five days of learning, building, and hands-on work with Bitcoin and Lightning came to a close, and the final day made the strongest statement of all.

How Kigali ended: hackathon day

Day five was hackathon day. After four days covering Bitcoin fundamentals, working with Bitcoin Core, contributing to open source, building on Lightning, and exploring real-world use cases, participants had one final challenge. Put everything together and build something real.

They delivered and presented working prototypes the end of the day, the room showed exactly what five days of serious, hands-on Bitcoin education produces. Participants left with not just knowledge, but the confidence to keep building and contributing to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

The people who made it happen

Leading the technical sessions was @dzeg5, whose dedication across five intensive days made a clear difference in how far participants progressed.

Supporting the bootcamp in Kigali were @btrustteam, @Murugi___, and @StephTitcombe. Behind the scenes, the organising team handled logistics and coordination from start to finish. Specifically, @EMbits, @JJ_the_creator, and @MIhejimba managed everything from planning to execution and all the work in between.

Sponsors and partners who made the Kigali bootcamp possible include Btrust, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), Tether Africa, African Bitcoiners, and Plan B Network, alongside local partners in Kigali.

Dar es Salaam is next, and applications are open

Africa Free Routing’s next stop is Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The bootcamp runs September 21 to 25, 2026, from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM EAT daily. Furthermore, it is led by Theophilus Isah, software engineer, and co-founder of Mavapay. Theophilus has led the AFR Lightning Developer Bootcamp a couple of times and brings a curriculum already proven with East African developers.

Here is what makes the Dar es Salaam edition worth applying for:

• Five days of hands-on Bitcoin and Lightning training with a practitioner-led curriculum
• Run your own Bitcoin Core node from scratch
• Build and test real Lightning applications using multiple SDKs
• Contribute to Bitcoin open-source projects with guided support
• Close with a hackathon where you build and demo a real project

The bootcamp is free to attend. Scholarships are available for deserving candidates and cover the cost of participation. To apply, you need to fill out the scholarship form, explain why you want to attend, and share how you plan to use the knowledge after the bootcamp ends.

Applicants must be available for all five days. The program is open to students, developers in training, fintech developers, and tech enthusiasts across Africa.

Apply now at freerouting.africa/dar-lightning-developer-bootcamp

Why Dar es Salaam matters

Dar es Salaam is Tanzania’s commercial capital and one of East Africa’s most active trade hubs. Furthermore, its position on the Indian Ocean coast connects it to cross-border economic corridors running through Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia, and the DRC. Lightning payments are a natural fit for exactly the kind of fast, low-cost, borderless transactions that define commerce in this region.

Notably, the AFR bootcamp’s presence in Dar es Salaam extends the East African developer cluster now forming across Kisumu, Kampala, Kigali, and Addis Ababa. Each city trains developers who go on to build community infrastructure. BitDevs chapters, university clubs, open-source contributions, and Bitcoin-native products all trace back to developers who showed up for five days and decided not to stop after the bootcamp ended. Dar es Salaam is next in that sequence.

Kigali was the beginning. Dar es Salaam is what comes after.

Apply before spots fill up: freerouting.africa/dar-lightning-developer-bootcamp ⚡🇹🇿