KANSANGA – Kampala International University (KIU) has established a Business Incubation Centre (BIC) to promote self-employment among youth.
Vice-Chancellor Prof. Mouhamad Mpezamihingo said the business incubation center will provide basic infrastructure and allied facilities for researchers and young entrepreneurs who are interested in developing early-stage business ventures.
Prof Mpezamihingo said the center is an independent setup that would support new and startup ideas of the students in their initial development stage by providing an array of targeted resources and services.
KIU says that services would be developed or arranged by the BIC and offered by it directly or through its network of contacts.
The VC hopes the center would soon start contributing to the economic growth of the country by employment generation and the creation of small and medium start-up companies.
“This incubator will a long way in enabling students to acquire essential development skills necessary for the competitive industry, the Vice-Chancellor said.
The technology and communications industries will gain access to affordable, stable and highly trained developers including software engineers.
The idea of a BIC according to Prof Mpezamihingo was driven by the realization that Uganda has very few developers, yet the KIU and other universities were churning out computing graduates in different fields every year.
Uganda has a high number of novice developers for sub-Saharan Africa.
The incubation center, which will be housed at the topmost floor of the IBM Library building is the first at any private university in Uganda.
The university will not work alone and will depend on the private sector to source project ideas and provide mentors for novice developers, said Mpezamihingo.
Uganda and its neighbors lack software engineers. The center offers governments an opportunity to develop local software in indigenous languages to push development projects.
The challenge, though, is finding investors willing to put money into the development.
