Internships in Rwanda: how to find them, and the traps to avoid

Internships are the most contested part of early career work in Rwanda. Some are genuinely structured and worth a lot. Others are unpaid labour dressed as experience, or something worse. Here is how to tell them apart.

What a legitimate internship looks like

• A named host organisation with a verifiable address and website.
• A written description of the role, the duration, the hours, and who supervises you.
• A named supervisor whose contact details you are given.
• A defined end date, and a reference or completion letter on completion.
• Real work that someone would otherwise be doing, not a photocopy exercise.
• No fee, at any stage, for any reason.

Where they are advertised: university career offices, TVET and school placement offices, professional associations, NGO career pages, large employers in Kigali, and this site's internship listings.

The traps

Paying for an internship. Any fee charged in exchange for a placement is either a certificate mill or fraud. There is no legitimate version of this.

Unlimited unpaid work. An internship should be bounded in hours and duration. If you are producing work the organisation uses commercially with no end point, that is an unpaid job, and you should treat the offer as a job offer and negotiate a contract.

"Unpaid for three months, then we will consider you." Three months of unpaid work does not create an obligation to hire you.

No supervisor, no letter, no reference. If there is no named person to confirm what you did, the internship has no value beyond the time it consumed.

Requests for fees or purchases. If anyone asks you to buy equipment, pay for a "clearance certificate", or pay a deposit to secure a placement, stop.

Making an internship worth it

• Agree in writing, before starting: the number of hours per week, the duration, the supervisor, and what you will deliver.
• Ask at the start what work you are allowed to put in a portfolio, and whether you can describe the organisation by name afterwards.
• Do real work with real tools, and ask questions about how the work fits into the organisation.
• Request a completion letter at the end, and use the contact to ask for a reference.
• Ask, in the final week, whether there is any structure they could consider you for.

Paying for the privilege

Be clear-eyed: some unpaid internships are worth doing because they are short, real, supervised, and give you something a CV can evidence. Others are not. The test is whether you would be able to describe a specific thing you produced, and whether a named person would confirm it.

If both are no, the internship is not experience. It is unpaid work wearing a label.