Uganda Hosts App Development Competition at Innovation Village

App developers attended a Hackathon event at the Innovation Village in Ntinda, located in northeastern Kampala, to showcase their mobile applications for a chance to win a grand prize of 18 million shillings ($5,000).

The three-day event, which started Friday and ended Sunday, was aimed at putting together a team of app developers in Uganda to focus on lean and XP practices, continuous improvement, constant delivery, and test-driven app development in the country and abroad, according to New Vision.

The contest, whose theme was “Mobile First,” tested how far the innovators were willing to go to come up with a unique mobile application that solves both local and international challenges.

Nurturing Local Talent

One of the organizers, Mr. Henry Damulira, who is the CEO of Ugandan financial technology company Air Save says the event is a big opportunity for Ugandan developers to showcase their work to the rest of the world.

Through his company, Damulira has participated in similar competitions both locally and abroad, including last year in Accra, Ghana, where he came in second.

The idea to host a local contest came last year, when he and his colleagues participated in an international app development competition in the United States, finishing fourth.

During the contest, Damulira got a chance to interact with several renowned international app developers, including the founder of Madrona Venture Group, Will Kamp, who agreed to support and nurture local talents in software development.

The two then decided to organize a local competition to bring Ugandan developers together with the aim of picking the best developers to take on job opportunities in the United States, where demand for software developers is high.

“Most of the app developers in Uganda work in isolation and they leave out a lot of features in the apps they develop because they don’t have people to guide them,” said Damulira.

“We now want to have them converge in one place and equip them with more skills, which they can use to develop our country.”

All participants were required to register as individuals and compete as individuals or as a team. Each team had between two and five members.