Uganda university opens software incubation center

Makerere University's faculty of Computing and Information Technology (CIT) is ready to roll with a software incubation center aimed at spurring Uganda's software industry.

The 100 students, who will undergo training for six months starting the first week of May, are graduates of different computing disciplines.

Faculty of the CIT, which is 3 years old, developed the national software incubation center (NSIC) with initial funding of US$300,000 from the Rockfeller Foundation.

The incubator will enable students to acquire essential development skills necessary for the competitive software industry, said Michael Niyitegeka, the head of corporate relations at CIT. The technology and communications industries will gain access to affordable, stable and highly trained software engineers.

The idea of a NSIC, according to Niyitegeka, was driven by the realization that Uganda has very few software developers, yet the university was churning out computing graduates in different fields every year.

Uganda has a high number of novice software developers for sub-Saharan Africa. That is the case because the 85-year-old university produces some 1,250 computing graduates every year.

The incubation center, which will be housed under the Department of Software Development and Innovations, is the first at any university in the East Africa region.

Uganda's software developers have acquired skills elsewhere and are focusing on the lucrative telecommunications sector. But according to Niyitegeka, the potential for software applications is enormous.

"There is a big market that is untapped. Most of these would-be buyers of locally developed software are buying it expensively from India. So the opportunities are huge and you can look at them sector by sector," Niyitegeka said.

According to Niyitegeka, even the regional market is huge for potential users from across Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and the emerging markets of Burundi and southern Sudan.

The university will not work alone and will depend on the private sector to source project ideas and provide mentors for novice developers, said Niyitegeka. Already, a number of big technology companies, like Google and IBM, have expressed interest in working with the faculty and the incubation center.

Uganda and its neighbors lack software engineers. The center offers governments an opportunity to develop local software in indigenous languages to push development projects.

"There is nothing that people are buying from India that cannot be developed here," Niyitegeka said. "Locally developed software would actually serve our needs better."

According to Niyitegeka, a policy that will enable the software industry's development and growth is needed, as has been the case in India.

India supplies much of the software development for big technology companies in the U.S., Europe and Asia. But India is becoming expensive, which offers opportunities for aspiring software developers, said Niyitegeka.

"The Indians are working with the big corporations while the small companies that cannot afford the fees they charge can look at us," he said.

In Uganda, most service industry stakeholders cannot afford the software licenses levied by companies like Microsoft. Yet there are few experienced software engineers who can create good local software.

Niyitegeka believes that a developed Ugandan software industry would thrive on local or regional demand as well as demand from companies that cannot afford fees charged by Indian software developers.

The challenge, though, is finding investors willing to put money into software development. "We don't have venture capitalists in Uganda and the banks are not interested," Niyitegeka said.