Coding for Business

The solution is Coding for Business. Coding for Business is addressing mismatch between graduate skills and industry needs which has contributed to high rates of unemployment among graduates which stands at 87% in Uganda (Uganda National Planning Authority report of May 2017). This unemployment problem has not left out graduates of computing programs such as Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology and Software Engineering. We partner with universities that offer computing programs to equip students pursuing such programs with practical skills in coding since it is the main component in developing innovation prototypes. We also equip these students with soft and entrepreneurship skills that enable them to focus their innovation prototypes towards commercialization leading to creation of more technology jobs for the university graduates in Uganda.

The problem is mismatch of appropriate skillset for industry needs among university graduates which has contributed to high unemployment rates in Uganda.  

This unemployment problem has not left out graduates of computing programs whose programs are more practical than theoretical in their mode of delivery. In Uganda, students from the above-mentioned programs are expected to have practical coding skills to develop innovation projects and present functional prototypes which are awarded marks and later commercialized for technology job creation.  

However, 90% of computing students in Uganda graduate with little coding skills. This is attributed to less motivation from the lecture work given and limited support from university in terms of favorable practical learning environment for such programs. In addition, the mode of teaching in universities in Uganda does not focus on business mentorship and soft skills to enable these computing students to commercialize their innovations. The above challenges are justified by the abandoned project prototypes by students after graduation. For example, Mbarara University of Science and Technology has had more than 600 innovation projects from their computing students since 2013 to date.  However, according to the university management, none of these projects has gone beyond the prototype stage. 

Coding for Business is currently serving first- and second-year students in computing programs from our partner universities every year. Our current partner universities include: Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Bishop Stuart University, University of Saint Joseph Mbarara and Metropolitan University all-in south-western Uganda. Most students while at university, entirely depend on their guardians for financial support. After graduation, the guardians withdraw the support as they expect them to start earning and living by themselves. However, in Uganda, more than 700,000 youth who join the job market every year only 13% get employed. This means that most graduates do not get employment immediately after graduation hence no income for them. We shall ensure these beneficiaries (students) graduate with technology startups which can be scaled to provide employment opportunities for themselves and others.

Through this project Coding for Business, we partner with universities that offer computing programs to equip students with practical skills in coding since it is the main component in developing innovation prototypes. We also equip these students with soft and entrepreneurship skills that enables them to focus their innovation prototypes towards commercialization. Our approach involves providing a shared co-working space with high speed internet, coding and soft skills training and business mentorship to develop the competencies of computing students to become producers of technologies leading to more employment opportunities for the youth.

Our main objective is to equip university students pursuing computing related programs with skills to develop and commercialize their innovation prototypes to reduce unemployment rate among university graduates. The specific objectives include:

• To equip students pursuing computing programs with practical coding skills through coding boot camps.
• To provide technical support to computing students in developing their innovation business models through business boot camps and mentorship.
• To source for networks in private sector, academia, industry, government/ policy makers, among others to foster growth of developed start-up innovation businesses.

The implementation of the solution follows the following phases:

Phase 1: Selection of students from the partner universities. Selection process takes 1 months.

Phase 2: Selected students take part in coding skills training boot camp. The students are trained to code (develop software) for 3 days in a week for a period of three month.

Phase 3: Business mentorship program where students are guided to identify innovative ideas and develop a minimum viable product (MVP). During this period, the participants are trained on concepts such as design thinking, ideation and business model canvas and meet with business mentors at least twice a month for professional business advice. This phase takes 8 month.

Phase 4: Participants with MVP are then guided to obtain seed funding to enable them to scale their products.

This solution known as Coding for business equips students pursuing computing related programs with coding and soft skills to develop and commercialize their innovations. This project focuses on ensuring the student gets a wholesome training from both a soft and hard skill perspective. Students are placed in teams and the focus is on ensuring each one acquires coding and soft skills. This may not always happen effectively in a big class during lecture times. The mode of teaching in universities in Uganda pushes the lecturers to focus on finishing the syllabus since its one of their key performance indicators. We also offer the students a co-working space tailored to the necessary mode of learning in which they are supported and mentored to identify community problems, practically develop innovative solutions (prototypes), test and commercialize them even after graduation.

Our solution is simply a program that empowers youth particularly university students pursuing computing programs with coding and soft skills and a shared working space with high speed internet and a quiet environment where they are mentored to develop technologies. We develop competencies of the educated youth with 21st century skills to address community challenges using technologies. We also use the social media to help our beneficiaries to market their developed technologies.

However during coding skills training, the participants are taught the following programming languages: HTML/CSS, PhP, JavaScript, Mobile Application Programming (Android) and Python.

The following technology tools are used: Notepad++, Sublime text editor, PyCharm, Android studio, Java Development Kit (JDK), WampServer, Mysql workbench, pencil project.

We launched a workspace in Mbarara municipality in southwestern Uganda. It is a conducive environment for thinking and mentorship that gives the students an experience they need outside their normal learning environments in universities.  We also acknowledge the need to fit into Uganda’s Vision 2040 that is focused on supporting growth of innovative startups for creation of more technology jobs and Ministry of ICT and National Guidance in 2017 that launched a five-year National ICT Initiative Support Programme (NIISP) to provide financial support to Information Communications Technology (ICT) innovators to develop and commercialize their innovations to benefit the end-users.  This therefore becomes the reason Coding for Business will achieve its purpose in contributing to economic development in Uganda and beyond. 

Due to financial and workspace capacity, we are serving 50 students from partner universities. These students have so far acquired coding skills. They were guided to form teams and with help from experts, identified community challenges and innovative solutions. The students have gone through problem tree analysis, ideation and design thinking, business model canvas trainings. At least 10 innovative ideas are now at prototype stage. The students meet in their teams at our workspace which has fast internet to work on their innovative ideas at their convenient time. 

At the moment, our workspace is situated in Mbarara municipality the western Uganda’s biggest capital targeting students from four partner universities. To reach more students and broaden effectiveness of our intervention, we will open more workspaces in three main towns of Kabale, Greater Bushenyi and Fort portal in western Uganda in the next five years which have more six universities that offer computing programs. We will partner with these universities to equip students with coding skills, students will also have access to our workspaces where they will be mentored to develop and commercialize innovations. With a total of 10 partner universities, we will be serving at least more than 200 students every year making a total of 1000 in five years.

Innovations such as cybersenga (http://cybersenga.com/), vuganda (https://carsparepartsug.com/), getAplot (https://getaplot.com/) have been commercialized. The following innovations are still offline and being piloted:  Academic Records Management System (SARMS), Sales Management System (SMS), Pick and Drop, Reproductive Health Services Monitor (RHeSM).

Our main goal in the next five years is to facilitate the creation of Information Communications Technology (ICT) ecosystem and marketplace for innovative digital products and services in western Uganda (our region of operation) to enable the development of software applications and innovations leading to highly skilled jobs for ICT graduates.

The main goal will be realized by achieving the following objectives:

1. Equipping computing students in universities with practical coding skills through coding boot camps.

2.  Providing technical support to computing students in developing their technology startups through business mentorship

3. Sourcing for networks in private sector, academia, industry, government/ policy makers, among others to foster the growth developed technology startups leading to increased employment opportunities.

Therefore, coding skills training, business mentorship, access to markets and seed funding opportunities will create the technical capacity of computing students thus ensuring high rate of survival of new technology businesses. Furthermore, partnership with at least 10 universities in five years will ensure more computing students are reached thus multiplying the impact. 

Some students may opt to settle for quick informal and weird employment opportunities after graduation as opposed to engaging in entrepreneurship or innovation activities. This challenge can limit the number of possible participants for the project. High administrative costs involved in running a project of this nature may also be a barrier to accomplishing our goals.

As a mitigation measure, motivational workshops will always be organized before and at the start of each phase of implementation to stimulate interest in innovation and entrepreneurship among participants.

During these workshops, successful businessmen and women especially those with technology businesses will always be invited to share their stories and testimonies with our participants to motivate them.

We will keep looking for more partnership opportunities with other organizations interested in empowering the youth and those looking for innovations to improve their operations. This will increase our financial capacity to cater for the administrative costs.

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We have 8 staff members involved in management and operations of the project.

We also have consultants who offer professional services and these include: 

• Mr. Ramadhan Kimbugwe, a soft skills training consultant
• Mr. Richard Kimera, a software developer and a mentor
• Dr. Ahimbisibwe Frank (PhD), a business coach
• Mabirizi vicent, an experience software developer. He handles mobile application trainings.
• Nasasira Edwin, he is a software developer who is always invited to train web based systems development.
•  Mr. Alexander Kyokwijuka, An MBA student, a business mentor, coach and author of a book “How to start a business in 10 days”. 

The 8 full time and part time staff members include:

Project coordinator: Mr. Ronard Tushabe: He is pursuing masters of Science in information systems and has more than three years of working experience as a software developer.

Training coordinator: Mr. Sankara Byaruhanga: Holds a bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, he is a software developer and a programming skills trainer.

Monitoring and evaluation: Ms. Akampurira Daphine: She holds bachelors of planning and community development and has undergone training in monitoring and evaluation.

Finance and administration: Nasasira Gloria: She has three years working experience in accounting and finance. She is currently pursuing certified public accounting (CPA) course.

Technical Advisor: Dr. Angella Musiimenta (PhD): Holds a PhD in health informatics, she is a researcher and deputy dean faculty of computing and informatics-Mbarara University of Science and Technology.

Business mentor: Dr. Manasseh Tumuhimbise (PhD): A senior lecturer in the faculty of Business and Management Sciences –Mbarara University of Science and Technology. Has more than 20 years in business training, consultancy and mentorship.

Soft skills trainer: Mrs.Irene Magara: An assistant lecturer in the department of electrical and electronics engineering at Mbarara University of science and technology. Her expertise is linking industry with academia in terms of skills development to ensure a more deliberate move of producing relevant graduates that join the market place.

Business mentor: Mrs. Nuriat Nambogo: She has 10 years’ experience in innovation mentorship. She has mentored and guided several teams to develop medical technologies in Uganda.

We are currently partnering with six organizations: Our main funders for this project: Africa Network Information Center (AFRINIC) and Funds for Internet Research Education (FIRE). National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO) and Excel Hort Agribusiness Incubator (ECHAI) fund and mentor some of the students working on agricultural innovations, Reproductive Health Uganda (RHU) funds and mentors students working on innovations to address reproductive health issues. We also partner with HTB holdings (one of the leading business training and consultancy firm in Uganda) to provide business mentorship and coaching.

Value proposition

Equipping computing students with coding and soft skills, business mentorship and a shared workspace to enable them develop technology startups. The customer problem we are creating value for is a mismatch of appropriate skillset for industry needs among university graduates which has contributed significantly to high unemployment rates that stand at 87% in Uganda.  

Customer segments

Computing students, business mentors who mentor students, coding and soft skills trainers who train students.

Key partners

Universities offering computing programs, organizations training software developers, organizations championing the use of internet, technology and innovations, organisations championing youth empowerment.

Customer relationships

We retain our target customers/beneficiaries by providing a conducive workspace with high speed internet and a quiet environment favorable for innovations, sourcing for seed funding opportunities for them to grow innovations, ensuring our learners are trained by experienced trainers.

Key activities

Selection of computing students/participants, coding bootcamp, soft skills training, business mentorship,workshops, sourcing for seed funding opportunities and advertisements.

Key resources

A workspace, internet, coding and soft skills trainers and business mentors.

Channels

We reach the target audience through social media (Facebook and WhatsApp), television and radio adverts and lecturers from the partner universities.

Cost structure

Key cost structures include: workspace rent, trainers and mentors' allowances, adverts (radio, television, social media, banners, flyers and posters), internet and general administrative costs.

Revenue streams

Coding skills training is free for participants selected for the project, other technology enthusiasts interested in coding pay training fees, grants and donations, a shared workspace fees, software development and management consultancy fees.

We are currently running this project on donor funding. We keep generating funds for sustainability through charging a fee for the shared workspace, entrepreneurship and ICT trainings and consultancy fees. This project is increasing our visibility thus we expect partnership opportunities with more local and international organizations. Although students do not pay any fee to participate on this project, they will be required to pay for infrastructure costs such as internet and a shared workspace when they start earning from their innovations. For example, the following innovations cybersenga (http://cybersenga.com/), vuganda (https://carsparepartsug.com/), GetAplot (https://getaplot.com/) are already generating incomes thus we charge them a monthly fee for a shared workspace and internet. 

We are applying to solve to access a financial support that will enable us boost our implementation process and scale our impact . On top of financial support, solve will open more partnerships and networking opportunities. Through solve we will have access to a community of funders and experts in technology like MIT, mentorship, technical expertise, media and conference exposure, business and entrepreneurship training which are critical to our business model as the organization and the computing students we support on the project.

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We would like to partner with the following organizations:

1. Andela. Andela trains software developers and has presence in different countries in Africa including country Uganda. We can work together to train more software developers and mentor them to develop technology businesses.

2. Tony Elumelu Foundation. Tony elumelu foundation empowers Africa's young entrepreneurs with financial support and business training to meaningfully contribute to Africa's prosperity and social development. The partnership with Tony elumelu foundation will help us to source for financial support for computing students  we mentor to develop technology startup business. 

3. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Since this foundation was established to improve quality of life of individuals then we would like to partner with them to increase employment opportunities of youth in Uganda thus transforming their lives. 

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The team will utilize the prize to shape the social and economic future of university students particularly those pursuing computing programs through innovation commercialization.  

Although our approach is not a piece of technology, it is a program that encourages computing students to acquire technical skills such as coding to develop digital technologies that address society challenges in health, education, agriculture, environment and climatic change, finance and governance and eventually create technology jobs for themselves.

We will use the prize fund to recruit more coding and soft skills trainers and business mentors as well recruit more participants to benefit from Coding for business. 

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