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Barbara Mutabazi is a ground-breaking innovator dedicated to promoting the economic empowerment of youth, especially girls and women. She does this by encouraging greater youth participation in Uganda’s technology sector, and actively contributing to the budding IT innovation and entrepreneurship sector of the country.
She believes that if one builds something people need, they do not have to look for clients as the products markets itself. Mutabazi, therefore, urges people to spot a need and build a solution. That is what she is teaching young people about.
She is a co-founder and Director of Hive Colab, a business accelerator and incubator for East African startups. She is also the founder of Women in Technology Uganda (WITU), which encourages, inspires, and trains women in technology, leadership, and entrepreneurship.
Her love of computers and what they can do was birthed by the old computer game- Prince. She wanted to build games and it sparked her journey to learn more.
After her bachelor’s degree in Business Computing at Makerere University Business School, Mutabazi made the Makerere University laboratories her refuge as she looked for work. The free internet was the drawing factor. Here, she inquired about what she did not know but also met her first boss who hired her as a web designer and personal assistant.
She showed her value and soon became a project manager. But before she could blink, he wrapped up the place leaving her jobless. But that left her with an extra qualification – project planning and management.
Seeing the emergence of innovation hubs, Ms Mutabazi thought she could duplicate what was happening in Nairobi. Teaming up with other IT enthusiasts, they started Hive Colab to support people in building innovations to solve today’s challenges.
It was here that she noticed that women were not gracing their space. That was when she thought of running a women-only programme to test the waters.
Watching them come in and freely express themselves made Mutabazi understand that part of the problem was confidence. That was the bedrock of ensuring women had their programme before they were integrated into the general room.
Later, in 2014, she started Women in Technology Uganda (WITU) to create a place of no barriers for women in STEM. A place that allows women to let go and focus on their dreams through working on confidence building, technical skills, communication and public speaking skills.
The organisation works with 6,000 women yearly, even connecting them to work and investment opportunities. That also birthed the Women’s Digital Centre.
Reminiscing about the first few days of the centre, Mutabazi says 1,000 women joined and today, they have 16,500 women some of whom are gathered on a Whatsapp platform. Those who do not have smartphones are contacted via SMS to share opportunities.
Mutabazi has over 12 years of expertise in business development advisory for early and growth-stage businesses, strategic planning, project management, and implementation. She has expertise in managing and establishing relationships among entrepreneurs, incubators, development partners, venture capitalists, and angel funders from Uganda and abroad. Technology and gender diversity advisory across the globe. She is a trained and experienced project manager and has delivered technology projects for UNICEF, UNCDF, US Embassy in Uganda, CBI, ITC and Uganda Telecom.
Recognition
Mutabazi is a 2014 Anita Borg Institute Change Agent winner – a recognition given to non-US-women impacting the lives of girls and women around the world through STEM.
She is a 2017 Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) Mandela Washington Fellow and an African visionary fellow in its inaugural cohort of 2017
Mutabazi is an experienced international speaker, who has had speaking experience at various events including the UN ECOSOC youth forum multiple times, UNESCO youth forum on science and technology multiple times, Motorola- UNDP mobile development stakeholder forum, GHC conference for women in Technology, Legatum Foundation, among others.
Education
She holds a Master’s Degree in Information Systems from the University of Salford Manchester, UK, a post-graduate Diploma in Project Planning and Management from Uganda Management Institute, and a Bachelor’s degree in Business Computing from Makerere University Kampala, Uganda. Currently, Mutabazi is pursuing a STEM-qualifying MBA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Mutabazi has also been a creative enterprise associate at the British Council, a board member and later board chairperson at the AfriLabs Foundation.