Innovation Village Launches Hacking Last Mile Solutions

In collaboration with partners, The Innovation Village on Thursday unveiled that they will be hosting a flagship ecosystem event dubbed Build Week, slated to take place in February 2023, under the theme Hack The Last Mile – Using Shared Infrastructure To Serve Last Mile Users Faster and Better.

The announcement was made in a joint press release during a stakeholder engagement held at the National ICT Innovation Hub in Kampala suburb Nakawa.

While addressing the media, Arthur Mukembo Future Lab Studios Lead at Innovation Village said the five-day event will be dedicated to developing technology solutions intended to reach last-mile users across different sectors of the economy. .“The Build Week is an inaugural innovation, ideation, and capacity building five-day activity aimed at fast-tracking the identification of unorthodox solutions to last-mile challenges across various sector value chains, and equipping entrepreneurs and corporate executives with insights, skills, tools, and opportunities to develop, launch and scale such solutions to serve the last mile user,” Mukembo said

A report by World Bank on Uganda Poverty Assessment 2020 shows the COVID-19 pandemic pushed over 30 per cent of Uganda’s population both in urban and rural areas into poverty with an increment of 30 per cent of people living below the poverty line. This shows the majority of our last-mile consumers are characterized by limited disposable income and are often more sensitive to risk and more demanding value for money.

“While most enterprises continue to produce products, services, or technology to serve these consumers regardless of how great their solutions are, serving a widely dispersed, low-income, and uninformed customer database is difficult, especially when faced with limited digital infrastructure, skills, and distribution channels to reach the intended customers,” added Mukembo.

Mukembo in addition said through a cross-sectorial synergy approach, they believe the evolution of Build Week can help local founders, corporate entities and government organizations get to learn from each other’s strengths, and become acquainted with tools design thinking, and sustainable solutions. “This is through a combination of technology, specialization, and economies of scale to better serve the end user customer” pointed out Mukembo.

Agnes Lumala, Academic Registrar at the Uganda Institute of Information Technology said government has put in place various programmes like the Parish Development Model, Rural Communications Development Fund, and the National ICT Initiatives Support Programme, among others, to enable various pathways for the youth to engage in meaningful work and generate reasonable outcomes from their efforts.

She said through the Programme Working Group framework, including those on innovation, technology development and transfer and digital transformation, they have realised that leveraging the power of public and private sector ICT innovation to fast track the results of interventions like these and to guide in the creation of new ones. “The focus on Hacking the Last Mile – the most difficult part is delivering the power of ICT innovation to where it is needed most,” she added.

Lumala hinted that the government has done its part in creating critical infrastructure; like the National Fibre Optic Backbone Infrastructure, establishing a national data centre, and creating various enabling policies but a lot of work remains to be done in getting critical innovations to hard-to-reach communities.

Japheth Kawanguzi, Team Lead at the Innovation Village further noted the need to identify and create linkages between entrepreneurs, corporate organisations, and government entities to leverage each other’s strength, digital infrastructure, and programs to create better solutions, and gain market traction and competitive advantage. “Build Week not only provides a platform for start-ups to pitch their innovative solutions to corporate organizations but an opportunity for these executives to acquire an imaginative creative mindset to successfully navigate and leverage innovation principles that foster business survival and sustainability based on their needs and objectives,” Kawanguzi said.

He added, “By harnessing the power of synergies, we can help the ecosystem break the mould, embrace change, and move boldly forward into the future of innovation and entrepreneurship.” He said creativity and innovation are born from minds, where ideas and knowledge collide. “In a productive environment with mutual understanding and respect, empathy towards user’s needs and working together will help drive the force of innovation in the country. The digital economy can be whatever you need it to be if you are willing to invest in it,” he stressed.

The Build Week will leverage various catalytic programmes and partnerships like the Digital Doors Programme to stimulate and accelerate innovation and scale.