A group of young innovators who developed the Ezy Agric App have met with the Minister of ICT and National Guidance, Hon Minister Frank Tumwebaze today November 20th at his office on Parliamentary Avenue.
The group was led by William Luyinda, the company’s Chief Executive Officer who scheduled a meeting with the Hon Minister following the app’s milestone when it emerged second in the development awards dubbed ‘Fall Armyworm’ under the Tech Prize category. The award was given to Akorian, the company behind the Ezy Agric App.
During the meeting, Hon Minister Tumwebaze was excited to meet the young innovators as he advised them to apply for the grant offered by the ICT Ministry. Tumwebaze also revealed that as the ministry, they support apps which are already in business and the ones ready to join market.
“The potential user sector which will use your app must confirm that your solutions solve their problems. If it’s an E-agriculture app like yours is, the farming sector, farmers of the nation must show demand because here we do not support incubators, we support apps that are already on the market or ready to go to the market.” Tumwebaze said.
In a one on one interview with TheUgandan.com, Tumwebze noted that the ministry is inviting all developers to join the competitive process of obtaining support through grants.
“We are inviting all app developers and innovators to participate in the competitive process of getting some support. So I thank them especially for being able to go through the incubation stages and for taking their app to the market,” Tumwebaze revealed.
While speaking to TheUgandan.com shortly after the meeting, Karwera noted they were able to get USD 75,000 as a reward for emerging second in the awards before she explained what the app is actually all about.
“We came to meet him because our app, Ezy Agric came second in the development awards of Fall Armyworm and we were able to get seventy five thousand US Dollars as an award. Ezy Agric is an app tech mobile and web application, we mainly focus on digitizing agriculture and to achieve this we have created a one stop center for farmers, agro businesses, in input and output market to meet and trade.
According to Karwera, this can be achieved by downloading the Ezy Agric app from play store and start trading while keeping data on your phone. She adds that if you don’t have a smartphone, you can get Ezy Agric from a nearby agent, who will provide services directly to you.
The excited and hopeful Karwera added that the meeting was fruitful for their app and they cannot wait to apply for the grant offered by the ICT Ministry.
“The meeting has been helpful because we’ve been in business for four years and we want to individually apply for the grant that the ICT Ministry puts out so that we can now promote Ezy Agric for more users to be on board.”