{{On August 11th 2012, the city of Kigali was the first in Africa to host the prestigious D\u00eener en Blanc\u00ae event, bringing together people from different walks of life for an elegant pop-up picnic in the middle of the city.}}<\/p>\n
Launched with just a handful of friends more than 20 years ago, Paris\u2019 D\u00eener en Blanc\u00ae brings together nearly 15,000 people each year in some of the most prestigious locations throughout the French capital.<\/p>\n
Now coordinated by Aymeric Pasquier and Sandy Safi, the D\u00eener en Blanc\u00ae events are hosted in over a dozen cities around the world. This year, Kigali was the first city in Africa to host the event.<\/p>\n
Hosted by Illume Creative Studio, in partnership with Events Africa, D\u00eener en Blanc\u00ae -Kigali boasted over 375 guests all dining under the stars in the Vision 2020 estates in Gaculiro. <\/p>\n
Guests for D\u00eener en Blanc\u00ae were specifically invited by the organizers to attend this unique event, and they recommended their friends to be invited as well. <\/p>\n
Guests were required to follow the D\u00eener en Blanc\u00ae rules in order to ensure a seamless and wonderful evening and all participants were required to wear all white and bring their own table settings and table d\u00e9cor. <\/p>\n
Participants were told to meet at one of six different pick-up points around the city and were taken by KBS buses to the main venue. The location remained a secret to ensure all guests arrived at the same time. <\/p>\n
Once there, guests descended from the buses onto a field of all white where they were greeted with French music and welcoming hosts. <\/p>\n
They then went to their selected tables, and immediately began decorating them and laying out their food which they brought themselves or purchased in advance from participating restaurants and food service providers Shokola Lite, Food and Stuff, Sakae, and Lalibela.<\/p>\n
On the evening of the event, RDB CEO Clare Akamanzi tweeted \u201cD\u00eener en Blanc is in line with Rwanda’s tourism strategy of being a city of choice for international events, meetings and conferences.\u201d <\/p>\n
Indeed, according to Joan Mazimhaka of Illume Creative Studio: \u201cOne of Illume\u2019s goals is to change what the world sees when you Google Rwanda, and we hope this is one of the events that will accomplish that. <\/p>\n
We also wanted to put together a fun event for Kigali\u2019s residents, regional guests and tourists and also put Kigali on the map as an events destination.\u201d <\/p>\n
The highlights of the evening included a live performance by Mike Kayihura, music by DJ Eric Soul, prizes for best table and best dressed (sponsored by Serena Hotels, Canal Plus, and RDB), dancing, and the opportunity for participants to make new friends Broadcast live online by Radio 10, the event not only entertained the guests present, but members of the Diaspora were also able to tune in to the festivities live. <\/p>\n
In addition to Tele10, other major sponsors and partners included KK Security, Positive Productions, SECAM, EABL , and Skol. <\/p>\n
The organizers would also like to especially thank the Rwandan National Police, the Kigali City Council , and the Gaculiro Vision 2020 midugudu for their support. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{On August 11th 2012, the city of Kigali was the first in Africa to host the prestigious D\u00eener en Blanc\u00ae event, bringing together people from different walks of life for an elegant pop-up picnic in the middle of the city.}} Launched with just a handful of friends more than 20 years ago, Paris\u2019 D\u00eener en […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[75],"byline":[334],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-2879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-homenews","byline-igihe-reporter"],"bylines":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2879"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=2879"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=2879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}