The Uganda Innovation Week 2022 started this week on Tuesday and ended yesterday with an awarding ceremony to top Ugandan innovations and startups. Previously known as Kampala Innovation Week, Startup Uganda announced that the event was scaled up to include participation from across the country, thus, rebranding to Uganda Innovation Week (UIW), with a focus on the entire country.
The three-day event had different speakers, themes, panelists, and different activities taking place in regard to innovation, digital transformation, and startup communities in Uganda. The event was held at Mestil that saw young innovators, developers, tech-preneurs, business enthusiasts, startup founders, and many others who are creating and coming up with different solutions.
Related: Kampala: Uganda Innovation Week 2022 Launches in a Rebrand
In attendance
Minister of State for National guidance, Kabbyanga Godfrey delivered closing remarks at the UIW2022, bringing the 3 -day event to a close. He called for more synchronized collaboration between the government and the startup ecosystem in Uganda.
The event saw various celebrities in music grace the occasion and including Apass, Ragga Dee, Abrayanz, etc to inspire the creative and entertainment industry in Uganda. In attendance, were various tech hubs representatives and tech ecosystems. The acting UCC ED Irene Kaggwa Sewankambo also graced the event to bring it to a close.
Inter-University Pitching
One of the activities to reckon on as young innovators was the Interuniversity pitching competition that is organized by Starthub Africa. Net Technologies from Busitema University were the pitch winners and they are building solutions for businesses, one of their customers currently is Umeme where they have built sensors to detect anomalies in cables. They bagged 2.5M UGX.
Marie Medicinal from Makerere University won the audience award. The pitch prize pool of 10M UGX was shared among Kanga-Care from MUST(2M UGX as First Runners Up), Smart Clean Energy, Mind Space from Makerere, AgroVerm, and among others.
Startup Awards
The last activity for the UIW2022 was the awards ceremony for the best Startups in the country as voted by the public and here were the winners.
The best Startup of the year(In Education) was Shareability Uganda while the Startup of the year (In Agriculture) was EzyAgric.
The Startup of the year (In Health) was My Musawo while Kreate Uganda emerged as the winner in creative industries. In Tech, Sumic Solutions was the winner.
The Champion of the year (In the Private Sector) was Stanbic Uganda while the non-private sector was won by URSBHQ. In the development sector, it was won by Mastercard
Water Harvesters also won the startup of the year overall category. Richard Zulu, lead at Outbox received it on their behalf.
Conclusion
There is actually more than this on what happened at the 3-day hybrid event. If you want to fully follow up with what transpired, follow this hashtag on Twitter. You can alternatively check out Startup Uganda’s official Youtube where the event was streamed.
