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The ministry of ICT & National Guidance, UNDP and Centenary Technology Services (Cente-Tech), have started the process that will define Uganda’s long term roadmap on digital transformation.
Cente-Tech’s Chief Technology Officer, Peter Kahiigi, said during a meeting of various stakeholders that digital transformation is accelerating in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The future is arriving faster than expected. At the same time, income inequality and related disparities have increased, stoking social discontent. For us to realize the promise of today’s smart revolution, policies need to be smarter too. The roadmap we are creating will be more responsive to change to fully capture potential gains in productivity and economic growth and address rising inequality as technological disruptions create winners and losers,” Kahiigi said.
Innocent Ejolu, UNDP Partnerships, Innovation & Development Solutions Specialist said the roadmap will present an overarching vision for a well-connected Uganda that delivers on the opportunities presented by various technologies, limits the risks whilst stipulating how the vision can effectively be achieved.
Amos Mpungu from the ministry of ICT welcomed this effort of define a roadmap that will deliver long term digital transformation in Uganda.
“As a nation we have various initiatives that are being undertaken with the solitary objective – to digitize Uganda. This effort to aggregate the efforts into a single blueprint is needed now and we are happy to lead this, in partnership with the various stakeholders across the ICT sector,” he said.
The meeting sought to engage and consult key stakeholders and identify the current baseline of inclusivity, digital penetration in Uganda and identify opportunities; also putting into consideration the current national context for digital skilling in the country’s education ecosystem.
Once curated, the Digital Transformation Roadmap will:
Enable the various digital agendas as a country to be achieved
ii. Enable streamlined and structured investment in the Ugandan digital space
iii. Enable utilisation of big data generated every day to mitigate risks
iv. Enable the digital skills acceleration program in schools around the country.
Cente Tech’s Head of Product & Business Development and Customer Experience, Steven Kirenga, thanked UNDP and Ministry of ICT & National Guidance for uniting the ICT sector major players.
“At Cente-Tech, our mission is to ‘deliver innovation that matters to enable and inspire growth. Therefore, our partnership with Ministry of ICT and UNDP is a natural one as we believe that digital transformation is the only way to achieve equitable and inclusive social & economic transformation in Uganda,” Kirenga said.
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