Japheth Kawanguzi (R), Team Lead at The Innovation Village and Dr Grace Ssekakubo (L), Chief Executive Officer at Cente Tech signing MoU at The Innovation Village in Ntinda on Wednesday. In the middle is Cente Tech Chief Technology Officer, Peter Kahiigi (PHOTO/Nelson Mandela).
KAMPALA – The Innovation Village has on Wednesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Centenary Technology Services geared towards developing the Information Communication Technology (ICT) based innovation ecosystem to facilitate the usage of technology and development of the software applications in Uganda.
This strategic partnership is aligned towards enhancing the adoption of technology and facilitate the growth of an open innovation ecosystem and digital marketplace where innovators, corporate organizations and entrepreneurs have countless opportunities to thrive, innovate digital products and reach new markets locally and beyond.
Commonly referred to as Cente Tech, Centenary Technology Services is the technology company of Centenary Group. With a combined ICT industry experience of over 75 years in the public and private sector, Cente-Tech provides holistic technology solutions and delivers innovation that matters to enable and inspire growth. Cente-Tech’s niche lies in ICT advisory and Research; ICT Managed Services and Infrastructure; and ICT Innovation and Digital Services
Speaking at the signing, Japheth Kawanguzi, Team Lead at The Innovation Village said, this partnership will create pathways for developing sustainable and scalable initiatives for the ecosystem who will leverage the use of tech-innovations to transform the country’s ICT landscape to achieve socio-economic development.
“Today, we continue to see the various ways in which technology has changed the way we transact business, work and access information, products and services. So, how do we take advantage of this opportunity to accelerate job creation, build market linkages and distribution network for digital entrepreneurs thrive.”
Kawanguzi added, “Together with Centenary Technology services, we will build linkages that attract financing and investment to the entrepreneurial ecosystem, provide a distribution infrastructural network to empower digital entrepreneurs scale their business beyond our local borders. We will also create pathways that give our innovators a competitive advantage and opportunities to support the creation of digital applications to support service delivery.”
According to Dr Grace Ssekakubo, Chief Executive Officer at Cente Tech, “Our partnership with the Innovation Village aims to generate highly skilled innovators, who in return will create technology applications to support service delivery, create employment opportunities and improve the use of data for ICT innovation and application development in the country.”
Adding, ‘we the reach we have of over 20million Ugandans within the Centenary brand, we will help innovators commercialize their innovations. This will have an accelerated employment effect as these companies will make revenue, grow and employ more young people.” Dr Ssekakubo said.
Jointly, the two entities will work towards building capacity of the tech local content, design and implement mentorship programs that build technical expertise. Also, both parties will identify and develop projects that spur development of the innovation ecosystem and leverage on their strength and networks to facilitate the adoption digital innovation in country.
The move by the Innovation Village and Centenary Technology Service is strategically geared towards supporting the National ICT Initiatives Support Programme (NIISP) whose sole aim is to facilitate the creation of an ICT innovation ecosystem and marketplace for Ugandan innovative digital products.
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