Makerere University Business School in partnership with Uganda Communication Commission (UCC) has concluded the eBooster bootcamp which focuses on providing solutions to the unserved and underserved communities and sectors.
Running under the theme, “ICT Solutions for the unserved and underserved communities” the two-day event consisted of fifteen (15) companies from which ten (10) were selected to participate in the final where the top five companies will be shortlisted for the final grants.
One of the companies, InfoSect Technology Ltd leader, Barnet Agaba said that from the research, 31% of women in Uganda are domestically evaluated every year. And this is from the report from the UN in 2021. Now, these women with no access to justice, when their rights are violated because they cannot afford legal services, is why they came to showcase their proposal of the pro bono photo, which is going to break the gap between the women who have been domestically abused.
“We have examples of women in our villages who are battling divorce, who are trying to fight for their custody for their children. An example would be a woman whose husband is abusing her domestically,” Agaba said.
He added, “So the pro bono photo is helpful in such a way that those who can’t afford legal services or who can’t even actually get a lawyer to help themselves with their problems so that they can also get justice. Now, the pro bono photo, the way it works because now we already have a part for where we have over 800 lawyers who have access to the whole smart case manager, which is a law practice management system, where these lawyers now actually track all their business processes, which is helping break the gap between the underprivileged person who can’t access legal services.”
The Sigynalic Uganda SMC Ltd leader, Mugabi Elvi while presenting said, “We need a healthy ecosystem. We see continuous, the one the government calls, chronic community stock outs. And those community stockouts are communities of medication like oxytocin, oxytocin costs 200 children.”
He added that without it, the mother having a hemorrhage during delivery can lose her life. And these things occur in the community, but there have been immense efforts by the government and other world leaders to digitize this health system so that the chronic loss of life can be a reality.
Mugabi revealed, “We are bridging a gap that is left by a lack of state infrastructure. We provide hardware such as this. This is really to the world, security, and connectivity. We have specialized connectivity equipment that ensures that signals can be transmitted to the energy and ensures that that can be up and existing that the data that is generated on this box doesn’t stay on this box.”
MUBS Principal, Prof. Moses Muhwezi congratulated the competing teams for the two-camp. In Addition, Majority of the people don’t earn one thousand shillings a week, not a day, a week, or one thousand. And you see when they give us average, it pours up to those who are bankrupt. It means there are those who can’t get one thousand in two weeks.
“I need to inform you that 80% of the population ideally is from the country. It’s not in town. When you are making products, you make products for the people in town. You are making products for 20% and there is power in numbers if you are doing business. So it means the people out there are left out. You are competing for business in Kampala. But the business in Kampala, you are competing with Washington, with Hamburg, with Amsterdam. They also want to access people in Kampala and reach them by group, by these sophisticated methods,” Prof. Muhwezi said.
He added, “You will give the population of them 80% and sell it. What a contradiction. Look at the person who brought the mobile money and ask a number and where it gets to go because mobile money is everywhere and that’s where it starts, idea, that’s where it started. And that business we cannot easily fail. So as we craft business plans and apps and all this, it’s important that we know where the majority of the people are, especially if the product is not a very expensive and unsurpassed product.”
He asserted that these applications being developed will create efficiency in systems.
UCC representative George Katongole said that they have a good rate of spending 125% of the money that the government gave out that will be spent on this project.
And this money is really a big part of the people that are trying to communicate. And it is a big part of the kind of communication in the first place that I have established for the other people. It is a big part of the communication in the first place for the other staff and the hand service that is for people who are in the country.
The eBooster camp is part of the eBooster project which is funded by UCC and implemented by Makerere University Business School led by Prof. Ernest Abaho.