Uganda through the ministry of Science Innovation and Technology, has set up a platform to bridge the funding gap between innovators and investors.
The platform will involve a series of meetings where innovators from different fields will be pitching their ideas to potential investors, whom government would have brought onboard from within the country and oust side.
“Many of our innovators have kept moving all over the world, they take so long to get funding, and in the process, they end up losing the technology because other people use it before them,”
Monica Musenero the minister for Science, Technology and Innovations, while she officiated the Uganda Manufacturers Association trade fare said that the first of these meetings is part of the activities to happen in the Uganda’s National Exhibition Week for Science, which is on going at the Luggogo based trade fare.
She added that the Ugandan eco system, has a lot of innovators, with innovations from different sectors, but their ideas end up failing mainly due to lack of funding;
According to Musenero, her ministry has taken more than one year studying on how best they can solve the funding blockade, in order to see Ugandan ideas, take off and later develop into sustainable business and solutions.
“We have sourced potential investors and created a platform, called the national science and technology innovations centre, to provide linkage between the innovators and investors, and will be permanently stationed at Luggogo UMA grounds on order to provide these services.”
The platform whose meeting frequency has not yet been established is to regularly meet, and the minister says the innovators will as well be trained on how to pitch their ideas also on how to strategies for funding
“We will help our innovators to learn how to source for funding, because many have been waiting for government funding which they have either waited for so long or not got at all. But this will be a business driving atmosphere for our young innovators” she said.
According to the global innovation index report, 2019, though Uganda’s innovation score dropped to 25 points from 31 points in 2013, the country outperforms countries with similar GDP. Unlike other countries, Ugandan innovations have not attracted sufficient funding to take off, and have suffered still births.
