Meet the Boss: Barbara Birungi, director of Hive Colab/founder of WITU

Empowering women in technology and business is Barbara Birungi's passion.

Barbara Birungi, director of Hive Colab and founder of Women in Technology Uganda (WITU) Meet the Boss is a How we made it in Africa interview series in which we pose the same 10 questions to business leaders across the continent. 1. What was your first job?

I was a research assistant for Makerere University where I was trained to see how we could help market craftswomen get their products online and whether it could actually make them more money. So I used to go interview the women, see what they do, how much they are making, the challenges they face, and how online marketing could help them. I was 20 years old.

2. Who has had the biggest impact on your career and why?

I would say that it’s Jon Gosier who I started working with as an intern and he just kept bringing me all these ideas. When I was doing an interview with him he asked me what I would want to do with my life if there was no limit. I told him that I would like to work with women and he asked me how. I told him I hadn’t figured that out yet and he said: “Figure it out and get back to me.” A week later he asked me: “So, have you figured it out?” I said that I wanted to get more women into technology and he said: “Okay, I’m going to give you a job but I want you to work on your idea.” He has always believed in me, he has always supported me even when I came with bogus ideas... he has always encouraged me and he has been my biggest influence.

3. What parts of your job keep you awake at night?

With Women in Technology we train young girls in programming, coding, web design and all that. So seeing a girl excited the first time you show her a cool website and tell her she can do that, or the first time she learns how to make a simple programme, that keeps me thinking how many more people can I help with, what to me is a basic skill, but to them it’s like rocket science.

So that keeps me thinking and coming up with more ideas on how I can help more women. The women I see on the street, and how technology can help them – that keeps me up. I just love women and seeing women elevated because I grew up in a single parent home. So anything to get a woman from level one to level two to level 50, whatever level she wants to get to, keeps me thinking.

4. What are the top reasons why you have been successful in business?

Not giving up on myself, even when at times it has been difficult and I have thought “am I doing the right thing, is it going to work” or “I’m too young to do this and I have invested all my wealth”. At least I know if [something I am doing] fails I did what I could, as opposed to me quitting and never knowing if it would have worked.

5. What are the best things about your country, Uganda?

The people are friendly, I like that, and I also like the fact that there is not that much that has been explored in terms of technology so I see a lot of potential. Each time I travel abroad and see good ideas I think, “this would be nice to have in Uganda; I don’t have the time to do it, but I wish someone would do it”.

That keeps me really excited about my country because there is so, so much potential. There is so much that has not been exploited and if guys could just wake up and stop looking for jobs and think [about creating their own jobs] and just go online and see what other people are doing, or go to Rwanda and see what is in Rwanda that is not in Uganda. There is so much potential and that gets me excited about my country.

6. And the worst?

Corruption is the worst and I just wish that the people who had the power to make changes – in the health sector, the education sector and all other sectors that are suffering in my country – would wake up and realise that the country they are running right now wrongly is actually going to be left to their children, and their children are going to suffer... and their children’s children... if we don’t develop the country right now when we have the chance.

7. Your future career plans?

We have a few women entrepreneurs in my country, that’s both in technology and general business, and I want to build a hub that is for women in technology and business to just encourage young women to start their own businesses. If they don’t have the skills, we will train them. If they don’t have the confidence, we will find ways of giving them the confidence... And also creating role models, a chain of role models – an ecosystem of women in tech and business entrepreneurship in the country so that young girls can see that women can do it... I want them to see that the sky is not even the limit, it is beyond the sky.

8. How do you relax?

Chilling with my children, that is my best form of relaxation. My daughter is two and a half and she is quite a talker. So she is always asking me things: “What is this mommy? What does it do? Why is it there?” It relaxes me answering all those questions, [as opposed to] those difficult questions from investors and startups and all that.

I have a son, too, who is five months right now and he is still too young to [talk], but we do have fun.

9. What is your message to Africa’s young aspiring businesspeople and entrepreneurs?

There is so much potential that is untapped in Africa. If you just look to your environment, to your community, there are so many problems that you can solve in all sectors in Africa. And if you just sit and think and look at the situations around you – even from an individual perspective, the issues that you are facing – and try and create solutions, then there is a job for everyone. Because I believe that, where Africa is going, it’s not going to get better with the job situation. Unless we wake up and become entrepreneurs and innovators, unemployment is going to become much worse... You don’t even have to go to university... just look, think, use whatever tools are available to you, and create a solution, and people will buy it and you will be making money.

If no one is employing you, employ yourself and others by creating your own business. That would be my biggest advice to people.

10. How can Africa realise its full potential?

For Africa to realise its full potential it would have to start with the educational system... It’s becoming a global world so competition for jobs (as well as competition for market and entrepreneurship opportunities) is not just going to be on an African level or country level. It’s going to become global competition. But what we are preparing our young children, or the generation that is now in school, is to be employees and think nationally, instead of globally. So I think for Africa to realise its full potential, we need to change our education system and train our young people to be innovators; to think, to be creative. We need to raise a generation of youth who think the sky is the limit, or even beyond the sky. And to do that we have to train and train and train so that we can keep up with the trends that are happening in the world and be relevant in the world.

Barbara Birungi founded Women in Technology Uganda (WITU) in 2010, an organisation that encourages, trains, mentors and supports women in technology and entrepreneurship. Birungi is also the executive director of Hive Colab, a tech business accelerator and incubator for startups which aims to build up the local tech capacity in Uganda and East Africa. Birungi has been leading the technology hub since its inception in 2010, and is an outspoken supporter of women’s empowerment using technology and entrepreneurship.