Imagine a tiny, beautiful, land-locked, densely populated and extremely poor African country that seven years ago was the site of a devastating civil war and genocide that left it in tatters. Now imagine a country that sets up an ICT Commission headed by its President; that adopts a national ICT Policy for the country and that sets up a top level national IT Agency to oversee a 400-page 5-year US$500 million plan and strategy for ICT. And finally imagine a country that commits to transforming itself from an essentially agrarian economy to a knowledge-based society within twenty years and that plans to become a services center in its region, despite being poorer than its neighbours and much less well-endowed with natural resources. Hard to reconcile these images, but they are indeed all of Rwanda. Jonathan Miller and Philip Esselaar look at the progress Rwanda is making and what it needs to tackle in the near future.