By Reporter
TECNO Mobile Uganda and partners MTN Uganda and Startimes have today donated computers to five secondary schools in Mukono district.
The donation comes from proceeds of the second edition of Heroes in Color Run, a charity event organized by Tecno. The charity event is organized in collaboration with partners to raise awareness about various problems. The event that took place in September 2019 under the theme “Digitalizing the Future”.
The beneficiary schools that will each get desktops are Namilyango College, Kasawo Secondary school, Kasana Vocational School, Sir Apollo Kaggwa Senior Secondary School, and St. Charles Lwanga Senior Secondary School. The donation is part of TECNO’s efforts to contribute towards the introduction of ICT in schools.
“The world is too digital to leave our youngsters illiterate about digitalization. Almost everything nowadays is digitalized. Let’s educate those around us the benefits of living a digital life and how best to embrace digitalizing the future.” Said Shiva Zhong, Managing Director Tecno Uganda.
Charles Bakabulindi presided over the handover the desktops to the schools.
“Heroes in color” run is Tecno’s way of saying “Together we can”. It’s also a way of saying thank you to all their loyal customers, stakeholders and well-wishers for supporting them to be number one smartphone brand in Uganda.
“Digital illiteracy in Uganda is real and we recognize that fact. This year’s Heroes in Color run was under the theme “Digitalizing the future” and we feel it’s time we paid more attention to this since this is where the world is heading. Our desire is to see that everyone in Uganda is digitalized so as to live a better life,” Zhong said.
“We cannot digitalize Uganda alone, so we are absolutely grateful to hundreds of customers who turned up for this year’s Heroes in Color Run. We thank our partners; MTN and Startimes for believing in our dream and joining us on this journey. We believe this is just the beginning of a bright ICT future all over Uganda.”
Zhong said that the company selected a few schools in Mukono as a starting point on a long journey of digitalizing the future and called upon everyone to join this journey of digitalizing the whole Uganda.
“Heroes in Color Run is an important event on our Calendar, because of its essence. It’s a day we meet with our customers for a noble cause. It reaffirms our mission as a technology brand that has been in Uganda for close to 11 years, our passion for technology is evident with what we have produced over the years and most importantly we are here to give our customers best smartphones and be part of the journey of digitalizing Uganda.” Concluded Shiva
MTN Uganda is delighted to be part of this initiative. Through our Corporate Social Responsibility arm; the MTN Foundation, has and continues to be at the forefront of driving ICT literacy in schools across the country.
MTN Uganda has over the years executed several ICT education themed interventions like the support to KCCA funded Primary Schools, Public Libraries, ICT training in Vocational Institutes including St. Simon Peter located in Hoima, Amelo Technical Institute in Adjumani and St. Daniel Comboni in Moroto, among others. The MTN ICT Bus has reached over 45,000 learners in rural schools in various parts of Uganda since 2013. The MTN ICT bus is a fully equipped bus with essentials in ICT learning. It traverses the country, teaching and providing practical ICT experiences to pupils.
“The journey to developing our country is a shared one, and that’s why this partnership with Tecno is quite symbolic of the good that people, corporate companies and institutions of our country can do when we combine efforts,” said Sen Somdev, MTN Uganda acting Chief Marketing Officer. “We’re definitely good together as a team”, he further remarked.
Uganda developed its initial ICT national policy in 2003. The policy framework document recognized that Uganda would need to embrace the goal of “lifelong education for all.” The policy further addresses literacy improvement and human resource capacity-building with strategies that include Integrating ICT into mainstream educational curricula as well as other literacy programmes to provide for equitable access for all students regardless of level, developing and managing ICT centres of excellence to provide basic and advanced ICT training to mention but a few.
While Uganda has had significant economic growth over the last decades, with a concomitant reduction of poverty, it remains one of the poorest countries in the world. It is, nevertheless, on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of universal primary education and, according to the 2006 National Report,2 is committed to achieving the MDGs of universal completion of secondary schooling by 2015 and elimination of gender disparity in both primary and post-primary levels.
As Uganda adopts ICT in education, the country faces the same challenges as most developing economies – poorly developed ICT infrastructure, high bandwidth costs, an unreliable supply of electricity, and a general lack of resources to meet a broad spectrum of needs. However, with the rapid emergence of wireless network capacity and the ubiquitous growth of mobile phones, the context of the infrastructure is changing. A national ICT policy is in place and an education sector ICT policy is before Cabinet. The Ministry of Education and Sports is taking steps to co-ordinate ICT development and has allocated resources to support implementation of its ICT strategy.
In addition to all these strategies by government in conjunction of Ministry of education and sports, brands like TECNO and its partners; MTN and Startimes are helping to facilitate in the reduction of ICT illiteracy levels within Uganda by organizing such charity events like Heroes in Color Run.
StarTimes PR Manager Cleopatra Koheirwe said, “At StarTimes, we love to support great initiatives such as TECNO’s Heroes in Color Run. A cause that has to do with giving back to society and helping develop the youths matters a lot to us. This is why we were glad to be actively involved in supporting TECNO to “digitalize the future.” A lot has been said about ICT and how everything has gone digital these days which cannot be ignored. We have to keep up with the times. So it is of great importance that students learn computer skills and are technologically equipped in order to sustain themselves in this digital era. We congratulate the schools receiving computers and we hope that our contribution will go a long way in shaping their future.”