Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the Rwandan tourism sector are slow in adopting
information and communication technology (ICT) and especially e-commerce applications
(Nibigira 2014). In the effort to pinpoint the drivers promising more extensive EC roll-out and
thus economic and societal ICT-driven improvements in Rwanda, we firstly show some ongoing
initiatives that of deploying ICT and e-commerce Rwanda. We then investigate more specifically
the key determinants of EC adoption in the context of Rwanda. To that end, we adopt the
Perceived E-Readiness Model (PERM) developed by Molla and Licker (2005) and apply it to ecommerce
adoption in Rwandan tourism SMEs. From better understanding what accelerates or
impedes ICT and e-commerce adoption in the Rwandan tourism sector, we hope to derive
arguments for further fostering ICT roll-out in general and the e-commerce roll-out in particular
in Rwanda – first throughout the Rwandan tourism sector and subsequently throughout other
SME-based business sectors – and thus to contribute to the country's economic and societal
development along the lines of many Information and Communication Technology for
Development (ICT4D) studies (Heeks 2006, Heeks and Molla 2007, Zelenika and Pearce 2013)