Sandrine Uwituze led the launch of Ishema, Rwanda’s national social security platform, before she turned 30. She shares insights into her new role as a deployment lead, her passion for clean data and how early mornings at the gym set the tone for high-impact workdays.
She may have started off as the only girl in the house who could fix a television, but today, Sandrine Uwituze is helping nations fix their systems. Her biggest flex so far is leading the launch of Ishema, Rwanda’s national social security platform (RSSB), while barely in her 20s. “We onboarded over 15,000 employees,” she says casually.
Now at Africa Global Logistics, deploying enterprise tech across 50 countries, Sandrine is proving that big things do, in fact, come in Rwandan-sized packages.
“I thought RSSB was big until I got here,” she says of the organisation that boasts of about 23,000 employees. “The IT department here is so huge, it’s almost like a separate company.” Sandrine is part of the team handling HR and HQ solutions, where she leads deployments across multiple countries. “There are many deployment leads like me, because we’re rolling out these systems in so many locations,” she explains.
Growing up, tech wasn’t the obvious path. In fact, her parents had already diagnosed her future: medicine. They wanted her to be a medical doctor.
But she laughs and says chemistry wasn’t her strong subject, she had a spark for tech. Thanks to a very persuasive neighbour, she got into a technical secondary school, chose computers and electronics, and the rest is history.
“When I was starting out, I used to build websites that, in my eyes, looked just like Facebook,” she laughs. “Of course, in reality, they looked nothing like Facebook, but at the time, I was convinced I’d made it.”
That early curiosity snowballed into a degree, then a master’s from Carnegie Mellon University, and later, the task of untangling legacy systems at RSSB. “The data was scattered, on paper, in silos. We couldn’t talk about being data-driven when we didn’t even have the data,” she explains.
Passionate about data
But rather than be daunted, she rolled up her sleeves, introduced agile frameworks, and helped steer the institution’s digital transformation forward. It all culminated in the launch of Ishema, now at the heart of how Rwanda manages social security contributions. “It’s integrated with all banks and mobile money and employees can now track their deductions almost in real time,” she explains.
While she started on the project as a scrum master, she was later appointed product owner at a critical stage, just as the system was being rolled out nationally. “There are over 15,000 employers in Rwanda. We couldn’t launch it all at once, so we did pilots and phased onboarding. At one point, we were onboarding more than 1,000 employers at the same time,” she says. “Some users weren’t tech-savvy and there was a lot of resistance to change. People knew how to trick the old system, and Ishema closed those loopholes,” she adds.
The launch got her airtime on radio and TV, and plenty of public interest. “Even now, people still don’t know I’ve moved on. This is my second week in the new job,” she says with a smile.
Sandrine is especially passionate about data and artificial intelligence, though she’s quick to point out the foundational work that’s needed before AI can thrive. “AI is amazing, but you can’t do anything with it if you don’t have the right data,” she says. “In Africa, data is either missing, scattered, or unclean. You can’t run if you haven’t even learnt to walk.”
She gives the example of Rwanda’s public health data. “RSSB’s two health insurance schemes cover over 90 per cent of Rwandans. If we digitise that medical data, we can use it to predict disease outbreaks and act early,” she says. “That’s the kind of AI I believe in.”
A proud extrovert
Cybersecurity is another topic close to her heart. “Just yesterday, we were talking in the office about how institutions are getting hacked because their data is not protected,” she says. “People don’t realise how vulnerable they are. A lot of it comes down to awareness. We need to teach people how to protect their data, even just starting with passwords.”
Outside of work, she leans into fitness, not just for the muscles but for the mindset. “Going to the gym early in the morning changes everything. Once I’m done, I feel like there’s nothing I can’t do that day,” she says. “It’s my mental health hack,” she adds.
She also describes herself as a proud extrovert. “I love being around people, hanging out with friends, just talking and laughing,” she says.
As for reading, she confesses that she is part of the digital generation. “I listen to podcasts more than I read,” she says. “There’s just so much content on social media, it’s hard to keep up. But podcasts help me stay curious.”
Reflecting on her journey, Sandrine says launching Ishema remains the highlight of her career. “I didn’t start as the product owner, but I took it over at such a critical time. We launched it, people used it, and I got to see it make a real difference,” she says. “That’s the kind of work I want to keep doing.
