Government to cut data cost by half to boost innovation

KAMPALA, UGANDA | THE INDEPENDENT | The government is confident that the cost of internet in the country will drop by up to 50 percent by the end of January, as it strives to empower innovation.

The high cost of the Internet has been listed among the main challenges to doing business in Uganda and entrepreneurs and innovators are continuously relying on mobile phones and the internet.

Speaking at the closing ceremony of the two–year Phase One of the Accelerator Programme of the Youth Startup Academy of Uganda (YSAU), Moses Watasa, the Commissioner of e-government said, this was one of the several ways of supporting the young people.   Other interventions are skilling and funding startups, according to Watasa.

The programme’s main idea was incubating the enterprises and their innovations to make them ready to attract investor, but also enabling them to make their innovations sellable and implementable.

Wetasa says the government has a target of covering the country with internet within six years.  He said that Uganda is blessed with a huge young population but that this comes with challenges especially creating job opportunities for them, hence the heavy investments in the expansion of internet connectivity, among others.

The Youth Startup Academy Uganda is supported by the Youth Startup Academy of South Korea, an initiative of the Directorate of Global Growth Policy at the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, which called on the government of Uganda to ensure the program continues after the end of this phase.

Other are the host, Hive Colab, a local academy that supports the growth of innovative startups; the National Information Technology Authority – Uganda (NITA-U), and the International Trade Centre (ITC).

Park Sung-soo, the Ambassador of South Korea in Kampala, also called for more efforts to educate and skill the youth if the country is to realise the benefits of a big young population, saying the future of any country depends on the quality of its youth.

The program has also been supporting young entrepreneurs to showcase their IT-based projects and products at international events including GITEX (Gulf Information Technology Exhibition) Global in Dubai and in Morocco, where several have signed partnerships with foreign companies.

On the impact of the programme, Escipion Joaquin Oliveira Gomez, the Director of the Division of Enterprise Competitiveness and Institutions at ITC hailed the collaboration of the many organisations and countries in growing innovation in Uganda and Africa.

He also dubbed ‘uninformed’ common claims that there is no innovation in Africa, reasoning that with the many challenges facing humanity in Africa, one can only survive by being innovative.

Hive Colab Director and co-Founder, Barbara Birungi Mutabazi, says the programme has reached more than 1,000 young entrepreneurs courtesy of the good contributions from their partner.

“When development agencies come to Uganda, we want them to work with the local innovators and local hubs,” Mutabazi, adds, “our goal is to create innovations that impact many Ugandans, drive growth in the digital economy, and extend beyond our borders. We envision building unicorns from Uganda.”

Collin Babirukamu, the Director of e-government Services at NITA-U, said that through this Academy, more than 1000 entrepreneurs have been incubated from across the country, each of them equipped with the skills to lead in powerful ventures, while more than 263 jobs have been created by the startups.

Others, Babirukamu says, include attracting investments and creating thousands of jobs, which he says is critical for the country.

This year alone, 24 along 13 startups received donations totalling 200,000 US dollars, an investment that strengthens the startup echo system, according to him.

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