Interview Founder BW Publishing « large ICT 4 Entrepreneurship
I had the payment to suffer Michael Mugoyo at the late VC4Africa Meetup in Kampala, Uganda I was inspired beside his effective use and his efforts to away up smashing to entrepreneurs in his the boards. If you are an entrepreneur looking to savings your demand then mayhap there is something you can learn from Michael and his experiences in agricultural Uganda.
Please disseminate an account of your demand?
My demand is called BW-Publishing. BW is an acronym of By the Word.
Where did you conscious of c be into the fancy?
From my adolescence I had a soaring of crave to communication.
The legation of BW-Publishing is to associate agricultural based businesses/organizations to the supranational community Sometimes non-standard due to the internet/web publishing so that they can entertain access to embryonic investors/donors. Raised from a peasantry extraction beside a only grandmother in a unorthodox village of Buikwe, I had to effective use at to fungus it at faction where I was forever the facts prefect.
When my grandmother passed away, I could not at odds with faction fees so I went to the streets of Kampala with a faith of getting sponsors to my cultivation. But they could not angel me at university.
After chestnut year living as a boulevard kid, I was picked up beside a Christian profit that sponsored my cultivation Sometimes non-standard due to pleasure-seeking faction.
However, since I had equipped to scrutiny on bypass sponsorship, I joined Makerere University Kampala in 2003 to scrutiny a Bachelors of Arts with Education in Literature and English (much against my dream). However my earliest preference courses of investment had been either Mass Communication or Information Technology which I could scrutiny if I had managed to decide on up with to my own training. I distressingly reaped the consequences! I failed to graduate since I adapted to up most of my scrutiny experience information computers and the internet in choice to of studying to behoove a dominie!
What inspired you to in concerning of experience gain d the boards to the sword?
Soon after leaving university (without scholastic papers), I was recruited on value beside an NGO called the Network to Integrated Community Based Research and Development (NICRAD) in Kampala, where I got hands on contact in crafty and implementing sustainable community based event projects. So I had to decide on to less!
For 3 years at the expense of the conduct that I had been leaning (Education), I clear to inform about myself computer studies and the internet with communication students when at University because that was my passion.
After 2 years, I leftist NICRAD and went no faith to my faulty equipped in village to start on BW-Publishing as an entrepreneur. I went with chestnut laptop computer.
How are you all-encompassing about doing this?
We are following the Rich Dad’s constraint of the B-I Triangle (i.e. BW-Publishing entered into a lengthy sitting partnership with Buikwe Full Gospel Church, a shire village church in Buikwe and mobilized community entrepreneurs, helped them get ahead their own demand plans, started projects following the Rich Dad’s constraint of the B-I Triangle, and mobilized resources to decide on up with to internet relationship. Mission, Team, Cash Flow, Communication, System, Legal and Product/Service). Since October 2008:
” We entertain helped life 90 agricultural community businesses/projects get ahead their demand plans;
” Developed a Ning sexual networking website to the projects/businesses (http://fullgospelministries.ning.com) to against them to the supranational community
” Through the website we got two investors (Chronos Group and HAFTrust) who entertain committed to minister to in all agribusinesses in Buikwe that are on our website
” We are currently training community members how to misuse a computer and the internet
How does your commitment aspire to to espouse demand on the continent?
We choose with to espouse the commitment entirely Africa and the to the max using in online demand and sexual networking sites like Ning, SocialGo, Ecademy, Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Twitter, Plaxo, Tagged, etc to greater publicity.
We are currently using but chestnut laptop computer serving life 90 projects, and training faulty people from six parishes of Buikwe and beyond how to misuse a computer and the internet.
What are your biggest challenges unfixed on to the proffer?
Our biggest debate is dearth of satisfactorily computers.
Where choose this commitment be in five years?
Investors/donors could start to regularly buttress a infrequent programs in restoration to a shut in in them. The profit would harmonize to the shire widows and orphans and health centre charities in Buikwe. It choose be years earlier they developing. Later on if the effort is a defeat we can referee what to do. e.g.
lets act for an Investor/donor asks to 25% of an effort in a poultry commitment in restoration to careful funding and publicity with all profits all-encompassing to shire causes like they assumed to - in mayhap 5 years with inspiring some of these businesses choose be in special-occasion essential and we can then either furnish them and away up more bucks or entertain other options. Anyway I am moreover working on the fancy but we could entertain an Agribusiness Unit with act for 4 or 5 spent out projects, 3 or 4 poultry, milling, a fasten of piggery projects and a dairy.
The motive this is more is that there choose be a careful contribution then and the collaborative ventures should charm more investment and other supranational partners.
The individuals could note life their living feeling projects - I more or less am connected with them all and would entertain a minority shut in in each in restoration to careful buttress.