Design · Technology · AI for Good
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Girl Effect · 2012 to 2016 · Rwanda

Ni
Nyampinga

Rwanda's first youth brand, built to reach every girl in the country and beyond.

In Kinyarwanda, Ni Nyampinga means a beautiful girl, inside and out, who makes wise decisions.

A Ni Nyampinga brand ambassador speaking to a huge crowd of young people
My role
Lead DesignerThen Design & Innovation Manager, Rwanda Four years in countryLiving and working in Rwanda, 2012 to 2016 Distribution strategyHow the brand reached girls and how they engaged: ambassadors, radio, digital, clubs and safe spaces On the groundA small team and 30 brand ambassadors, one in every district
The brief

Change what it means to be a girl in Rwanda. Not for some girls, for every girl, and for the people around her.

Still from the film: a young woman in Rwanda carrying firewood on her head

Made by girls, for girls

Watch the film on YouTube →

A 2014 film about Ni Nyampinga's magazine and weekly radio show, made by Rwandan girl journalists, and how it's helping girls across the country finish school, prevent HIV and stand up to violence.

What changed

Rwanda's largest youth brand
79%of all Rwandans knew Ni Nyampinga.
4.5Mpeople engaged with the brand, and 3.5 million were regulars.
60%more likely to have strong self-belief: girls who engaged most, compared with girls who'd never seen it.
14→45%of girls choosing a health centre for sexual health care, now their first choice over clubs.

It reached far beyond girls. Boys and adults who engaged regularly were 67% more likely to hold positive views on gender equality.

"I am who I am today because of Ni Nyampinga."

Ni Nyampinga reader, Rwanda
How it worked

Not a magazine.
An ecosystem.

Ni Nyampinga met girls wherever they were: in their hands, on the radio, in their schools and on their phones.

A girl in Rwanda reading a Ni Nyampinga magazine outdoors

Read

A quarterly magazine, made by Rwandan girl journalists.

100K+ copies every quarter, into more than 4,000 schools and communities.

I designed how it reached girls, through 30 brand ambassadors in every district, and how they engaged with it through clubs and a safe-spaces programme.

A Ni Nyampinga reporter interviewing a girl with a microphone

Listen

A weekly Ask Aunty talk show and Sakwe, a radio drama for young Rwandans.

48% fewer listeners thought a girl could ever deserve to be beaten, compared with people who didn't listen.

Sakwe widened the audience too: "Ni Nyampinga is for girls only" fell from 72% to 34%.

Schoolgirls in uniform at a Ni Nyampinga club in their classroom

Belong

Clubs that girls started themselves, more than 10,000 of them.

64% of girls who talked about their health with friends went on to seek care, against 49% who didn't.

I spent six months with researchers finding and mapping the clubs. It reshaped our whole safe-spaces strategy.

Three young women in Rwanda looking at their mobile phones

Connect

SMS, USSD, voice and mobile web, tested from 2014 as phones spread.

1 in 2 girls in Rwanda with a mobile phone texted 1019, our text-in radio line.

We tried everything, kept what worked and learned a lot from what didn't.

No single channel did it. The girls who lived in all of them changed most.

The same lesson shapes Tukisonga today →
Where the questions started

Baza Shangazi, ask Auntie

Inside every magazine was Baza Shangazi, an Ask Auntie column where girls sent in the questions they couldn't ask anyone else. Years of those questions later became the foundation of our AI health chatbots.

See where it led: AI Health Chatbots →
Two girls reading an issue of Ni Nyampinga magazine together

What I learned

Distribution is design.How something reaches a girl matters as much as what it says. Getting it into her hands, onto her radio and into her school was the real design problem.
Girls will show you the strategy.Nobody planned 10,000 clubs. Girls built them, and the smartest thing we did was follow.
Change her world, not just her.Some of the biggest shifts showed up in boys and adults. A girl's choices only grow when the people around her change too.
Next project Girls Connect →