Makerere, why spend $30m to import tracking software?

I don’t normally write when I am pissed off but this time, I am not just ashamed, I am angry.

It is astounding that with all the information technology (IT) we have done at Makerere for more than 30 years, with all the PhDs at Makerere University College of Computing & Information Science (COCIS), we cannot design a simple tracking software?

I hear Uganda is going to spend $30m to import tracking software from overseas! This is what a third-year student in India can write in his hostel room in two weeks. To me, this is unbelievable! This is a national curse!

We are sitting on the birth of the Son, and all this is akin to looking for a torch from China! What do I mean? Uganda gave birth to the computer age in Africa. Makerere was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) of Africa in 1970!

We groomed Eng Dr Kiwanuka, who designed his own engineering programs from his own brain, no import. My own son Clive Benedicto Misagga is a Makerere Electronic Engineer. The brain is here! But here we are, looking for a midwife from overseas for $30 million!

If you ask me, this $30 million should have been for National Enterprise Corporation (NEC). Our own national company that makes guns and bullets. This money should have been given to our soldiers’ Sacco, Wazalendo, to invest in Ugandan innovation, not to enrich a foreigner!

At the very least, this money should have been for Uganda Police to build its own tracking command center at Naguru, run by Ugandans, tracking every stolen car, every boda boda, every gun! Think about it.

In Uganda today, a local contractor building a classroom block is told “go and compete with NEC!” NEC is building houses, Wazalendo is building arcades.

So, our own government companies are fighting over small chapati building classrooms, supplying cement, small tenders while the real meat such as the $30 million tracking software is done by foreign firms!

If NEC, for example, cannot be given specialized projects like this $30 million tracking software, then when will they ever grow? When will they ever become like South Africa’s Tracker? When will they ever become industrial giants?

You kill them by making them fight over crumbs, while you feed foreigners with the main meal! At the end of it all, tracking is not rocket science. It is a small chip + small code + map. Look how others did it. For instance, Rwanda refused to import.

They built Zipline drone tracking. Now they track blood delivery with their own code. Take the issue of Latvia and Estonia. They may be smaller than Wakiso in population. They have no gold, no oil. But they only have brains and small workshops.

They made Bolt the tracking you use every day! They made Skype! South Africa, our brothers, woke up recently, said we will not import. They built Tracker, Cartrack, Mix Telematics now South Africa manufactures and develops its own tracking software and sells it to the whole world, including to us!

If South Africa can track every car in Johannesburg with its own software made in Pretoria, what is wrong with ourselves?

SO MAKERERE, WHAT IS WRONG WITH OURSELVES?

Now, this goes out to my dear friend Dr Monica Musenero, the former minister of Science, Technology and Innovation this is worth project is on your lap. For Musenero’s information, President Museveni put this docket on her lap because she is a scientist.

She knows the pain of research. This $30 million tracking project should not fly to Russia, to China, to Europe. It should be on her table in the ministry. Then there is Eng Dr Kiwanuka, my Muzukulu I have known for more than 20 years.

Lock him in a room in Kifuuta for 30 days. Give him roasted goat and lamb ribs. He will write it Uganda track 1.0. So, give the hardware to NEC to manufacture. Let Wazalendo finance it. Let police test it.

Let the ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation test its intellectual property. Anything short, 10 years from now, we will still be importing software to track our own cows. It would be a shame to the Hill. It is a shame to the nation.

The author is an investor, contractor, and football enthusiast.