Cross Roads

  1. What is your name? My name is Vincent Nwonah 2. Where are you from? I’m from Nigeria in West Africa, but recent travels - especially in East Africa, have left me feeling “at home” that I now see myself as African first.  3. Where did you go to school? I schooled at Wellspring University, a young University in Benin City. I studied computer science under Prof. Wilson Nwankwo, currently a Professor of Cyber Security and Software Engineering at Edo University. I mention Prof. here because studying under him left me with a solid Computer Science understanding, and an understanding of the urgent need for high quality technical education in the country. 4. Tell us a little about Nigeria. What influence has it had on the person that you are today? Nigeria - Nigeria is the most populous black nation, with many many different ethnic groups. We have our challenges as does any nation, and our strengths.  I grew up all over Nigeria, born in Oyo State in the West, growing up acro...

  The Rationale The event is an annual celebration of impactful social enterprises organized by Entrepreneurs for Entrepreneurs (OVO)  https://ondernemersvoorondernemers.be/en/projects     and Einstein Rising  https://einsteinrising.net The key word for this event is social impact.  From the literature that accompanied the event there was a record of some progress after a few years where there was a sense that in the past each of the key players was pursuing their own end (disjointed effort) and that ther3 was little or no coordination. The key players in the sector were identifioed as business development hubs, education institutions, NGOs, government initiaitives, incubators and accelerators.  The event has four objectives the first is to showcase the growth journey of social enterprise development in Uganda in the past five years.  The second objective is to promote collaboration and co-creation among social enterprises in Uganda and those acro...

  The focus of the last day was a discussion on Investment and Funding.   The Team From JICA facilitated the bulk of the discussions that took place in the earlier part of the morning. There was a focus on the NINJA program or what is fully known as the Next Innovation with Japan. The event was created at first to foster intergovernmental cooperation between the Government of Uganda and that of Japan. The emphasis was on the creation of partnerships and the possibility of building a stronger Ugandan Ecosystem. It was noted that there is great possibility in partnerships between Ugandans and the Japanese with Uganda’s young population (80% below the age of 25) and Japan’s rapidly ageing population.  JICA is in 150 countries out of the 195 that make up the world. So far therevhas been a global support of about $15 Billion. About $750 Million to Uganda. The key word in JICA philosophy is Trust.  It was noted with great delight that Uganda was second place in in terms of...

  Laying the groundwork. The second day of the event was directed towards the contribution of women in the ecosystem and filling the gaps that exist.  The first Keynote was about the NSSF Hi-Innovator Story as well as the story of Young Africa Works in Uganda. Adrian Bukenya the country director of  Mastercard Foundation delivered a good keynote and talked about the role of women in innovation and the greater development of the economy. A good amount of time was spent sharing the stories of women entrepreneurs who have made some inroads in the creation of businesses.  The next session was the introduction of the role of Entrepreneurial support organizations in the support of businesses to scale. This was delivered by Richard Zulu of Outbox Hub. Richard also manages the association’s work as well as the coordination of a host of programs that run with various industry players and policy leaders. His talk was about the technicalities of application to the varioys progr...

  The Uganda Innovation Week event is up and running. We are already on day two after successful launch. We at Intersection Magazine are interested in the event because of some of the work that we are pursuing towards the creation of a richer innovation technology Ecosystem. If you have read our work in the last few months, you will notice that we covered the big four. Here wecare referring to Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt. We also included Rwanda and covered how they leveraged the use of major players like Norrsken and Impact Hub Kigali to increase the scope and capacity of the internal ecosystem.  A study of Uganda underpinned the bulk of the work that we have been doing in the area and the role that the different members of the ecosystem have been playing in the growth of the sector. We attempted to create a map based on the major players like Outbox Hub, Innovation Village, Hive Colab, Design Hub Kampala and TechBuzz Hub to name but a few. We have since then seen ...

  I met Katharina Hartwig through linkedin. What i was interested in is to find possible partners in a project that we might be doing in Rwanda. We had a need for local talent especially in Software Development and i thought that the group she works with would be a great place to find the young people with skills.  From what i gathered having looked at her profile, she was in a unique position to help find and locate people with thw skills necessary for jobs in tech and other fields for the foreign market.  When writing for this and other projects, i tried to pay special attention to the Technology and Innovation Ecosystems of several countries (the big four-Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt). To this we added Rwanda and Uganda by default because this is where we are currently headquartered.  Rwanda was interesting because of the involvement of Norrsken and Impact Hub Kigali which we covered after a visit to Rwanda in early January.  We see the rise of Rwan...