Rwanda’s ambassador to China, James Kimonyo, has embraced social media to market coffee and chilli from the east African country.
Mr Kimonyo told the BBC’s Focus on Africa that he had to move away from the traditional way of advertising in exhibitions after seeing that China’s online shopping industry was huge.
The ambassador last month caused a stir on social media when he donned an overall and rode on a delivery bike to deliver Rwandan coffee to a customer who had purchased online.
“China’s TikTok economy is about $5.4 trillion and not only that, China is the biggest internet user and it has largest number of online shoppers and is well connected with 99% of the population owning mobile phones and the mobile payments systems here are very effective,” he told the BBC.
Mr Kimonyo has been in Beijing for three years and says this is the new way to conduct diplomacy in an evolving world.
“When you are posted in a mission like this which is big like China and you know its a big market, very focused on business, what you do is to go out there and take advantage of what is happening,” he said.
