A delegation of Mount Kigali University (MKUR) students joined hundreds of young people from universities across the country at the Capital Markets Youth Forum 2026, held at the Kigali Convention Centre. The forum was organised by the Capital Market Authority (CMA), Rwanda’s capital markets regulator, in partnership with the Rwanda Stock Exchange (RSE), the Rwanda National Investment Trust Ltd (RNIT), and the Luxembourg Agency for Development Cooperation (LuxDev).
The forum brought together university students, young professionals, policymakers and industry leaders for a day of panel discussions and hands-on learning, all built around a single message: that saving consistently and investing early, whether in shares, bonds or other capital market instruments, is one of the surest paths to long-term financial security. For the MKUR students in the room, many of them hearing directly from market regulators and exchange officials for the first time, the event offered a rare bridge between classroom theory and the realities of Rwanda’s growing financial sector.
“It was a very insightful event,” said Roxane, a final-year Public Relations and Communication student at MKUR who attended. “I got to learn more about what the Capital Market Authority does, and I picked up real insights on how to save my money better.”
Roxane’s experience echoed that of many of her peers, who left the forum with a clearer picture of how the CMA regulates the market, how the Rwanda Stock Exchange functions, and how everyday savings can be channelled into productive investment rather than left idle. For a soon-to-graduate Public Relations and Communication student, the forum was also a useful study in how a regulator like the CMA communicates complex financial concepts to a non-specialist audience, a skill she will carry into her own career.
The closing ceremony also doubled as the climax of a national investment bootcamp, the Capital Market University Challenge, which had drawn student contestants from universities nationwide through months of quizzes, roadshows and investment-pitch competitions. MKUR’s delegation watched as the bootcamp’s finalists were recognised on stage, with the overall winner awarded an investment portfolio worth Rwf 1,500,000 in capital market shares, a tangible reminder of how far disciplined financial knowledge can go.
The Capital Market Authority is led by Chief Executive Officer Romeo Ngarambe, who has made youth financial inclusion a central pillar of the CMA’s strategy since taking office earlier in 2026. Under his leadership, the Authority has continued to expand the Youth Forum’s reach, building on previous editions to bring structured financial literacy programming directly to students across Rwanda’s higher learning institutions.
For MKUR, the forum was more than a field trip. It was an invitation, extended to its students alongside peers from other universities, to start engaging with Rwanda’s capital markets now, as students, rather than waiting until after graduation.