Back to building

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Four years ago, I got a presidential appointment to lead Uganda’s Industry 4.0+ Bureau in the Science, Technology and Innovation Secretariat. I tried to say no, but eventually figured, why not step up and give what I can for my country. A blank canvas to paint with all those years of entrepreneurial experience.

I took the opportunity to rethink how Uganda could build a hi-tech ecosystem that allowed innovators to build successful businesses. We analyzed the ecosystem and found the gaps: an absence of enabling infrastructure, very limited investment availability, weak enabling policy, and human capital gaps. Together with a very small team, we did our piece to fix this convening global partners through local industry engagements and think tanks, holding a deep tech summit and a climate tech summit, and crowding in the thinking needed to define how to approach it.

Four years later, here’s some of what we delivered:

Uganda is making low-volume, high-quality electronics and is on a pathway to scale. We’ve proven we can commercialize academic research, build highly impactful government platforms, commercialize hardware, and turn quartz into silicon. We can build local automated manufacturing and processing lines and 3D printers, we have an active gaming studio tapping into the global gaming industry.

We’ve built digital public infrastructure for climate projects (https://pearlcarbon.africa ), partnered with global agencies on big data platforms for climate NDC monitoring (https://bit.ly/ugclimate), stood up microgrant mechanisms for tech research, enabled the development of AI ventures, and built a sovereign cloud including an AI research cloud with GPU capacity alongside specialized training programs for human capital and soon to launch an after school training program giving school labs access to self paced learning platforms for new tech.

And through a series of investor summits, we attracted millions of dollars into Uganda’s tech ecosystem.

We have done hard things! This video shares some of what we were able to do and the approach: https://bit.ly/ind4video

However, at the core, I am and have always been a builder, and I feel like it’s time to go back to building. At the end of June, I transitioned back to the private sector, going back to building Tripesa and Roamio, an AI-powered travel marketplace connecting African tourism operators directly to global demand. It has always been unfinished business, and it carries forward the same conviction that shaped my four years in government: that Africa has to own the rails, not just use them.

I want to thank everyone who has walked this journey with me  I can’t name you all, I want to thank Hon. Dr. Monica Musenero Masanza for giving me the opportunity to tinker and build.

Uganda is a beautiful country, and we shall definitely make it the best.

Check out https://roamio.ai — looking forward to all the collaborations.

Written by

David Gonahasa

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