When Vision 2020 was conceived in the early 2000s, it was envisaged that Rwanda could become a middle-income, knowledge-based society by the year 2020, with an economy driven by the services sector. In this process, the use of ICT plays a central role.

Since then, great strides have been made, helped by the boom in mobile phone penetration, which made it possible to reach a big audience using ICT. Through the e-government program, the country's leaders have been on the forefront of ICT, with an increasing number of public services becoming available online, ministries regularly using bulk-SMS to send out information and numerous Ministers, other officials and public institutions taking to Facebook and Twitter.

It was therefore surprising, and disappointing, to see that there was little Rwandan presence among the winners of the CIO100 awards, which were given out last Friday in Kigali. Only 2 of the 100 winners were Rwandan, and there were only 10 Rwandan contenders out of a total of 350.

Among those 10, there was only one private company, BCR, which went on to scoop a prize. The second Rwandan laureate was Anaclet Kalibata, who with his directorate for immigration and emigration has gotten used to receiving awards for outstanding service delivery, thanks to the use of technology.

But apart from BCR, where was the rest of the private sector? Where were the sharp minds of kLab, the tech laboratory/community where people can settle to work on innovative ideas and brainstorm with each other? Where were the other banks, who have also been stepping up their use of electronic services? And where were the thousands of SMEs that constitute the bulk of our private sector? The sad truth is that they stood out only by their absence.

Rosemary Mbabazi, the permanent secretary in the ministry of ICT, attributed the poor show of Rwandan companies to the fact that they were not aware of the competition, and trepidation to compete on the international level.

In the first case, Mbabazi in fact incriminates her own ministry, because MYICT should be the first to disseminate information about such competitions and encourage Rwandans to take part. As for the second reason, while that may be true for competing in business, it seems an unlikely argument for an award competition.

The more probable explanation is that the majority of Rwandan companies, and especially all those SMEs, still make very little use of ICT in their business. Considering that most of them don't even use basic ICT tools such as a website or a Facebook account to interact with their customers and promote their business, how can you expect them to use ICT in innovative ways to improve their service delivery?

While MYICT is doing a commendable job with its ICT literacy campaign, it should come up with a similar strategy targeting the private sector and aimed at incorporating ICT in their operations.

Otherwise, we cannot expect to win more prizes in the next ICT competition.