The two-day SWARM Summit 2024 which was held at Four Points by Sheraton Kampala, came to a successful conclusion on Friday.
Organized by Hive Colab in collaboration with partners, the annual summit brought together visionaries, disruptors, innovators and thoughtful leaders at the forefront of the startup ecosystem.
This year’s summit was held under the theme “The Future is now: Emerging Trends Shaping Startup Ecosystems.”
The summit kicked off with keynote speeches from different stakeholders and experts, covering a wide range of topics, from the latest trends in technology to strategies for scaling up innovations.
Dr. Diana Nandagire, the director at MUBS Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Incubation Centre kicked off the summit on Thursday, with a thought provoking keynote address on the future of innovation in the startup ecosystem.
In her speech, she emphasized the need to identify young innovators as well as scaling up commercialization of research in Uganda’s learning institutions.
“African Development Bank Group believes universities conduct research but this research is never commercialized. Entrepreneurs must be identified to leverage from the research being done.” Dr Nandagire said.
In his speech, Dr.Hatwib Mugasa , the executive director, National Information Technology Authority Uganda (NITA-U) said the summit is crucial to the government’s efforts towards scaling up economy digitalization.
He also revealed that NITA is spearheading a program to deploy the digital public infrastructure and digital public goods to be harnessed by innovators, startups and gig economy to springboard them to a developed economy.
“NITA-U is launching a program to deliver digital public infrastructure and digital public goods to be harnessed by investors and startups. These are very expensive technologies which we don’t expect a startup to deploy.” Dr. Mugasa said.
Meanwhile, the SWARM Summit closed on Friday with a graduation ceremony of the third cohort of the Youth Startup Academy Uganda (YSAU. In this cohort, 40 students graduated from different courses. The YSAU graduates are now proud members of the Global Alumni Network.
Teddy Ruge, co-founder Hive Colab, the spear headers of the YSAU said the program is one of the acceleration projects they are currently undertaking to scale up skills development and opportunities for young entrepreneurs in Uganda.
“We are the youngest population on the continent. So, it is extremely important that organisations like ours exist to help skill young innovative players in the market for job creations responsibilities and to also help them become job creators in the country.”
Hosoo Ahn, advisor at International Trade Centre (ITC) and UYSA said the project was started in Uganda in 2022 with an aim of fostering young Ugandan entrepreneurs to help them do their businesses.
She also shared success stories of the project since its opening in Uganda.
“We have so far over 600 entrepreneurs who have participated in the programme which is also becoming our strong alumni system. We are providing entrepreneurs access to equipment and also help them connect with other startup ecosystem players, big companies and investors as well.” she stated.
Currently, the program has undergone three cohorts, nine bootcamps and impacts over 700 startups.