Moses "Ras" Mutabaruka
Ras Mutabaruka Bio’/
Moses (Ras) Mutabaruka is a storyteller, entrepreneur and community builder whose ingenuity, creativity and faith in humanity have allowed him to carve, from circumstances of struggle and migration, a life of passion, vision and enduring, Inexhaustible love for the continent of his birth.
While the unrest, violence and eventual genocide that befell Rwanda during the 1990’s left an indelible mark on Moses life and forced him to spend many years in refugee camps and the slums of Nairobi, such experiences also gave him a deep commitment to ideas and manifestations of peace, justice, self-reliance and prosperity which still inspire and animate his life today.
In order to understand Moses and the entrepreneurial spirit he now Exemplifies, one must first re-visit his experiences as a young boy of eight years old, when he lived in a Congolese refugee camp, and where he embarked on his very first business venture. He would buy a pack of cigarettes from a near-by market, and sell the cigarettes individually around the camp. He would later grow this small enterprise until it included the selling of full packs & boxes, sugarcane’s and candies for other kids. By the time he left the camp, he had his own small stand, a “kiosk” among the thousands of tents and would help fund his families escape. Experiences like these honed Moses’ business sense and set him on the path of self-reliance, entrepreneurship and social awareness that has defined his adult life.
More recently, Moses has founded TAP Media Ltd (TAP Magazine Parent Company) after being frustrated with seeing how Africa and Africans were often portrayed in global media. TAP is a Pan-African media platform that tells African stories from an African perspective with a mission to re-brand Africa. One story at a time. In 2017, TAP reached over 7 Million Africans.
Over the last two years, TAP Communication and consulting boutique has helped organizations and institutions such as The African Union (AU), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), Next Einstein Forum (NEF), Enda Sportswear Ltd, Uber and Albany Associates tell better stories of the work they do in Africa.
TAP Media, through its magazine and film studio also aims to expand the scope and narrative focus with which the lives, ambitions and accomplishments of African people are depicted by presenting one of the world's most vibrant, dynamic and historically complex regions in a way that preserves its nuance, humanity and global significance.
Since 2019, Moses has led the production and directed two TAP Films documentary films. He also produced and directed other short feature stories and documentary series for Deutsche Welle (DW) and Al Jazeera English. One of the short film, “Colours Are Alive Here” won bronze in The Arts category at the New York Film & TV Festival Awards, 2022.
Ras has also recently been recruited by the Thompson Foundation & Africa No Filter to contribute to a course on how Journalists can tell better African stories and in 2023, he was invited by Deutsche Welle Akademie to teach as a guest lecturer, a course on constructive journalism and storytelling .
Before working on TAP full-time, and to give back to his adopted country of Canada, Moses spent five years working as a public servant in the department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) where he received two back to back Deputy Ministers Awards of Merit for service to Canadians. At the height of Covid 19 Pandemic, he was honoured to be asked to return to Canada as one of the people selected to work on Canada’s Vaccine and Therapeutics Taskforce where he helped coordinate national, intergovernmental and international efforts on the COVID Vaccine and Therapeutics response and to which he also received another public service award of merit. Moses has also received the Canadian Association of Rwandan Youth’s (Cary) Entrepreneurship award (2014) and the 2018 No Limit Award for Entrepreneurship and Community Leader of the Year.
Currently, Moses is working on shifting Africa’s Climate Change narrative from that Africa as just a victim to a more balanced and nuanced narrative.
The mental health commission of Canada reports that one in five Canadians experiences a mental health problem or illness, with a cost to the countries economy of well in excess of $50 billion. That only "one in three people who experience a mental health problem or illness -- and as few as one in four children or youth -- report that they have sought and received services and treatment."