My Dream tackling Poor Waste Management Problem in Uganda ( 3 years and Counting )
It never occurred to me that I would pursue this dream this far, growing up from Hoima and doing almost my entire adult education in Kampala, a lot happened that my memories still recall.
I joined high school in 2010 as far as I still remember, Kawempe Muslim S.S was one of the best schools(and still is) around Kampala. My aspirations at the time were to become a doctor, an engineer and a lawyer.
But still, something wasn’t right with such aspirations. I loved computers better than anything else during my primary and high school years ( i strongly still do). I still recall my primary routine, using my Dads computer every lunchtime from school and throughout weekends nonstop, in fact, my Dad was forced to think I will get sick the way I always used the Pentium 3 Compaq by then.
In senior 2, I got one of my biggest presents in life, an Acer mini notebook. And this was for my school studies, this meant I had to carry it to school.
That moment was the beginning of my story.
I started to teach myself programming in HTML, notepad was the thing those days, I hardly knew of dream weaver or WordPress. I developed my first facebook-like website in s2, in fact, that alone got me my first website building gig from our geography teacher.
In s3, I grew a strong interest in making games of my own and this drew me in the life of coding python ( python 2 by then). I learned to make animated games like the snake game, brick game, and others with python.
In s4, this is the year of serious books, always at home at such a level, mum takes away all our gadgets and never subscribes for TV. It’s a year of reading books. You know how those things work. I never had luck with computers that year besides being my high school technician ( a post which was given to a student by the computer science department to help them in fixing, maintaining computers for students before exams or in classes)
To the Point.
In 2015 during, my form 5 I formed the first cyber club in school to help more students get acquited with computers, as the president I was privileged with accessibility to the computer lab 24/7.
I used to keep the computer lab key and times got to sneak out my Acer laptop to the dormitory for programming practices. There were a lot of activities my club would engage in, things like science fares, inter-school technology competitions, and many other things.
Towards the end of 2015, my school was invited to participate in the UCC ACIA awards of the time, which meant that my cyber club was to come up with a good innovation to beat this challenge, my head started boiling, and guess what I came up with some few pretty cool ideas I thought.
Holiday time came, and this time around I was meant to be with my auntie in Kazo, a city suburb for a few days before heading back home.
It’s during this time I witnessed one of the biggest problems urban dwellers face whether they live in organized or slum communities. This caught my attention all over a sudden.
Waste management is a real nightmare for people in Kampala. Just to give you a scenario, my auntie whose a nurse with Mulago works sometimes in a day or at times night shift.
On one fateful day after she had come back from work, I had her laugh with a friend about something that had amused her, the two were talking about how Kasasiro( garbage) had become a problem to them. She told her friend how the neighbor's son (Robert) whom they used to pay to collect their trash for 5k had also resorted to picking it from peoples homes and taking it to their home. Because Roberts mother had no clue about who was bringing all these trash bags to her place, she was left cursing on whoever person brought their garbage to her home.
At that point, this gave me an idea something I have been trying to pursue since that year. In 2015, I organized a team of fellow students and decided to submit our idea for ACIA awards but since it was s6 and mum would confiscate all my gadgets I decided to give this project a break.
In 2017, I got admitted into university (Makerere), this to me was the time to pursue my dreams. I enrolled for a bachelor’s degree in computer science to equip myself with more programming skills to work on this project.
And as stuff always happens, at Makerere opportunities always follow you most especially if you’re good at what you’re doing. I met a couple of friends and people together we started pursuing this idea.
The journey
It’s been 3 years trying to figure out how I can contribute towards a sustainable and waste-free society.
The journey has been full of ups and down, we have applied for incubation programs told the idea was good but the solution was lacking, applied for international competitions like the big idea twice (2017 & 2018) and got rejected.
However, that has not only been a blessing in disguise but helped us shape our innovation and more.
During this period, I enrolled in incubation programs like with Resilient African Network, online leadership courses which have equipped me with skills like designing thinking, M&E planning, business modeling, team management, and many other skills.
Since my goals with programming are to develop technologies that can help support our community, I was privileged to work as an innovator with Resilient African Network, UN Women and Makerere University on a project that gave me a practical feel on real-world problems faced by a lot of people.
About Yo-Waste
Yo-waste is an on-demand garbage collection service app that allows anyone with the smartphone phone to instantly request and is connected to a nearest available garbage truck collectors in their communities.
This will increase the capacity of garbage collected from people’s homes by a good percentage as well as provide a reliable garbage collection system to my community.
The application is still in development and we expect to roll out the beta (MVP) in early April with specific areas around Kampala.
Currently, we are engaging a number of partners like Makerere University, KCCA and MTN through MTN App challenge 2019 with the Innovation Village to help us roll out this product for testing.
Our Vision
To us, Yo-Waste is more than just an application, we are trying to come up with a more efficient mechanism that can handle trash collection and at the same time cater for recycling in the aftermath. Waste management can be properly dealt with a culture, something technology can easily fulfill.
Our vision is not to stop at building Yo-Waste, we plan on rolling out more innovative technology solutions that can help city authorities such as KCCA to manage the problem of poor waste disposal in their urban settings.
We want to transform Yo-Waste into such a comprehensive tool, something that’ll provide an impact, efficiency in waste management & recycling and keep our community sustainable and free from waste.
Our Progress
Our progress is so far overwhelmingly good, we have met a number of potential partners, engaged garbage collection companies on a personal level, made a need finding in a few areas around Kampala and still counting.
We were also nominated for the Hultz regionals Prize competitions in Accra and plan to raise more money to help sustain our everyday operations.
Currently, the project is still self-funded by the founders and are looking to work with partners with special interest as we do, support us financially, acceleration and networks. We shall be grateful for that.
Conclusion
To us, the passion that drives and keeps us pursuing this project is more than just monetary gains, a waste-free society would mean something to us.
To me, that is a story worth sharing, I feel joy every time I pen down the hustles of my life.
You can please follow us on twitter @yo_waste
