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STUDY ABROAD OPTIONS
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 PETER NSANZE ON UGANDA, AFRICA’S DIGITAL PEARL Earlier this year Peter Nsanze made a visit to Uganda. He works on e-commerce applications for a large steel manufacturer and had not visited the country for eight years. He was interested to see what opportunities there were for digital development. My personal pilgrimage to Uganda was a chance for me to get back to my roots and spend time with people I had not seen in a long time. While the thoughts of friends and family were at the forefront of my plans I, as an active participant in the world of e-business, could not help but wonder how the internet was affecting and changing the lives of Ugandans. Several discussions, and online research hours later, I decided to make the trip an exploration into Uganda’s internet culture. First impressions were better than I had expected. Reports of the capital, Kampala’s, booms in business were true. All the way down the Kampala Road I noticed businesses that, to me, seemed to have sprung up overnight from once derelict, ramshackle buildings. Everything from fast food chains to mobile phone shops (everyone has a mobile) seemed to exist, and they were not empty of clientele. People seemed to have the money to be out enjoying themselves and businesses were there to cater to their needs. In my first half-hour of walking around town I had passed renovated hotels, new bars, restaurant and three Internet cafes! The first one I visited was operating inside the Norfolk Hotel and offered a service at a reasonable rate with connectivity at a speed similar to that of a typical UK, home dial-up service. The next two, Cyberworld and The Click Café offered such attractive rates that I spent several hours in them that evening. They were much cheaper than my uncle’s home service provided by Infocom, Uganda’s only ISP. Infocom, was formed from the merger of Uganda’s first ISP’s, Starcom and Infomail and it controls 80% of the market. It offers a service similar to many UK ISPs. A subscription provides the typical home user with a connection at the cost of a local phone call, about 250 Uganda Shillings per minute online. The cafés, on-the-other-hand, ranged from UGS100 down to UGS50, depending on how much time you used. Some even had memberships that entitled the user to discounted rates. A recently opened café placed adverts, for 2 free hours’ surfing, in the New Vision newspaper and on the radio. Along with mobile phones and Internet cafes, radio stations are another phenomenon that has been taking Uganda by storm. Back in 1989 there weren’t more that two that I could remember. Now as I tuned through the FM there seemed to be an endless choice of English and vernacular stations available. So it was with these new discoveries that I set out to meet some of the main players and influential people in Uganda’s wired-up community. I wanted to know how developed the systems and users were and what business opportunities lay ahead. The replies were quick and positive. In the late 1990’s, Bob Kabonero (MD of Kampala Casino), and Edward Balidawa (Director of Uganda Home Pages) had seized the opportunity and set-up the first ISP in Uganda. That was the beginning of Uganda’s ride on the information super highway. A few days prior to the meeting I had heard from a friend that a London-based photo library was looking for a way of cataloguing its half a million plus collection into a database. The task of scanning and entering such a large volume of work in Europe was not cost-effective, and they were investigating outsourcing its data entry work to India. Knowing the similarities between India and Uganda’s work ethic, I asked one contact questions about the practicalities of starting up such a project in Kampala. Uganda was as I had hoped: 15 years of political and economic stability, brought in by the present government’s reign, had allowed prosperity and opportunities to flourish. Although they still had not seen a lot of Western IT work being sent to Uganda, apart from internal jobs for large corporations based there, they were getting ready for it. Education, as always, was at the forefront. I met Vincent Musubire, the Chamber of Commerce’s Director Public Relations and Information technology. He was very enthusiastic about connecting up all of Uganda’s districts to enable the government to have a fast and accurate access to data. Along with this he is one of the country’s leading e-commerce champions. Having kept an eye on its development in the West, Mr. Musubire wants to see Uganda’s e-business potential recognised by the rest of the world as hotbed of opportunity and a reliable, stable place to do business. We spoke of the work his project, Musubire’s Leap 2000, was trying to achieve and left together to visit Uganda Home Pages. In the weeks that followed I met Bob Kabonero, who chatted to me about the possibility of setting up data entry and cleansing projects. Kechil Kirkham of K2Informatics described her work as an IT Manager in one of Uganda’s larger organisations and how she planned to start Internet society meetings. These would be casual affairs where people could get together, discuss ongoing projects and ideas, and even have visiting guest speakers. Such meetings are what would be needed to advance the development of the Internet’s use in Uganda. A meeting with another friend, Cedirc Babu (who now works in Ulster as a CIS consultant), enlightened me to what was happening across the border in Rwanda. After the terrible troubles the country had gone through, the new government was arranging scholarships for students. Most of these were for IT degrees in the United States, with the condition that the graduates return home to help rebuild the country. A pool of skilled citizens is still building up. Dr. Paul Kagame, the Rwandese President and Cedric had been discussing the prospects of setting up IT training centres as a good base for the future. Last but not least I spoke to the young members of staff working in the web cafes. They had interesting stories to tell of how they had come to work there and many were into web design and basic programming. They had been on a steep learning curve since discovering computers and were enjoying it. Some had managed to get work building sites for local businesses, like tour companies, and were excited by the possibility of being able to work on projects from countries like The UK and America. They were, however, all too aware of the downturn in the international market. I exchanged e-mails with the likes of Java users (JUG), who were organising online forums to discuss issues, and told everyone I would try and campaign for the development of Uganda’s and Rwanda’s IT industry. At last I had an idea of what Uganda and, to some extent, Rwanda were ready to do and who was willing to be a part of this new revolution. I could go back to the UK optimistic of hope for their continual success and try to be a part of it myself. Some links for reference 1. Uganda Home Pages http://www.uganda.co.ug/ 2. AITEC:mail to: aitec.uganda@infocom.co.ug 3. Musubire’s Leap 2000 www.ml2000.co.ug 4. K2Informatics http://www.k2informatics.com 5. Uganda Web Directory http://ugandaweb.com/ 6. Ugandan Government: http://www.government.go.ug/ 7. New Vision News http://www.newvision.co.ug/ Java Users Group
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This page last updated on January 28 2004.
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