Mark Kirumira
22 June 2009
Four students from Makerere University's Faculty of Computing and Information Technology will represent the country at the world's biggest IT innovations event to be held in Cairo, Egypt early next month.
Competing with the region's best during the Microsoft Regional Imagine Cup 2009 Competition that was held in Nairobi at the start of this month, the students working under the Development++ project name were among the best two of the 17 projects that were on show.
Makerere had five projects, the biggest by any university at the annual regional event and all of them were ranked among the best 10 but the overall winner came from Ethiopia. The students in the winning team included Joseph Kaizzi Kasolo (team leader), Kibet Seth Kigen, Guy Acellam, and Ivan Okori Nape.
"We congratulate students who participated in the regional competition and thank them for representing the Faculty well. "We further congratulate students in the winning teams for the awards received. We thank the parents, the Faculty of Computing & IT and Microsoft for facilitating the students to participate in the competition," said Mr Michael Niyitegeka, head of corporate affairs at the faculty.
"In the end, this experience will provide an opportunity to our students to test their capability and skills against the rest of the world." This year round, Microsoft invited students around the world to harness their creative energy, their technical know-how and most of all, their personal passion to take part in an urgent mission. With the United Nations Millennium Development Goals as their guiding light, students used the power of technology to help solve some of the toughest problems facing the world today.
Recently, Emmanuel Ukirwoth, a first year student of Bachelor of Information Technology at the faculty, was recognised by IBM, one of the leading producers of IT products and software, under its Smarter Planet University Jam.
The Imagine Cup, now in its seventh year, is one way Microsoft is encouraging young people to apply their imagination, their passion and their creativity to technology innovations that can make a difference in the world.
About what the next challenge means to the faculty, Mr Niyitegeka said: "Winning this prestigious award goes a long way to demonstrate the Faculty's commitment to becoming a global faculty and university."
Last year, CIT topped the Microsoft Regional Imagine Cup 2008 Competition that attracted 26 projects from nine universities from Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.
Two out of three winning projects were from CIT including the overall winner.
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