Kampala, Uganda — Today, The Innovation Village, in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, has released the findings from a survey to understand and analyze the current state of the developer landscape in Uganda.
The survey, launched in March 2021, sought to understand the number of developers, their demographics, region, gender and age; their engineering journey, coding methods and languages; and levels of education, area of specialization, and experience. A total of 1,288 developers were surveyed, including anyone who builds and creates software and applications. The survey also included software developers, computer programmers, programmers, software coders, and software engineers.
The survey is particularly important as Uganda is experiencing a digital technology evolution. Software development and Innovation Technology (IT) have become influential in affecting how businesses, organizations, and various sectors operate when developing products, improving service delivery, and solving problems affecting consumers.
“The digital space in Uganda is young yet growing fast. Today, digital technology is undoubtedly playing a key role in creating work opportunities for young people by removing geographical barriers. In the roll out of its Young Africa Works in Uganda strategy, the Mastercard Foundation has identified the digital sector amongst its priority sectors in Uganda with the goal of attracting more young people,” said Renita Nabisubi, Digital Economy Lead, Mastercard Foundation.
Speaking about the findings, Wilson Kiggundu the Chief Technology Officer at The Innovation Village said that the survey showed that 73.4 percent of developers in Uganda are under the age of 30 with 79.5 percent living in the central region of the country. “This implies that Uganda’s developer population is young and has the potential to grow. For this to occur, we require the joint efforts of the technology ecosystem, talent pool of developers, and innovation hubs to mentor and train these young developers,” he said.
The tech industry remains male-dominated with the results from the report showing that only 23.4 percent of the developers are female. “While the number of females in the tech space remains low, we are moving in the right direction. The Innovation Village has put a lot of effort to encourage females to become developers and to learn coding through the Women in Tech series and the Code Queen program,” added Kiggundu.
While 63.1 percent of developers became coders in a professional capacity after attaining technical skills in computing, information technology, and programming, with the evolving nature of the industry and access to the internet, there are various ways one can learn coding. 29.9% of respondents stated that they learned how to …….