Tanzanian students to create new software for Microsoft, Nokia

Tanzania's University of Dodoma (UDOM) will soon start making software which is to be used for Microsoft platforms such as Windows as well as Nokia mobile phones, an official said on Sunday. George Mulamula, an senior official of the Dar es Salaam Technology and Business Incubator (DTBi), said that the special program to that effect is expected to start next month at UDOM in the central part of Tanzania and later also involve other institutions of higher learning such as the University of Dar Es Salaam. DTBi is an independent autonomous entity of Tanzania through the Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) with its own advisory Board. It promotes start-ups with innovative ideas for the growth of ICT technology-based emerging companies and contributing to job creation and enhanced economic health of the nation. It operates as a business not-for- profit Company. Mulamula, who is the DTBi bChief Executive Officer and Senior Government Advisor, was speaking at the official closing of the DTBI's first phase training of local entrepreneurs in Arusha Region. "We have special agreement with Microsoft, which is the world's leading computer software and hardware maker through which Tanzania students can create software for a number the tech giants' desktop and mobile gadgets," he said. Microsoft's operating system (Windows) reportedly runs in over 80 percent of Personal Computers being used in the world today. The tech giant recently also acquired the Finnish mobile phone manufacturing company Nokia. If all goes well, students at the University of Dodoma will make software that will run in Windows computers and tablets as well as Nokia phones that operate under the mobile version of windows platform. Hand-in-hand with that, COSTECH has signed special agreement with yet another technology giant IBM through which local scholars here will be allowed to make use of various tech patents filed by IBM to create software. "That follows President Jakaya Kikwete's recent visit to the United States where he toured the IBM facilities and the tech giant agreed to come to Tanzania and lay open all its patent for the local students here to try and make own technological inventories based on the patents," the official said. DBTi training has benefited 11 trainees in Arusha among them young Patrick Michael Moshi who has just created a special tourism marketing software known as 'Go-Join Africa' to run on the Android platform and soon to be made available on Google's play-store. "The aims of our series of training it to enable young graduates from higher institutes of learning to stop tarmacking in search of jobs but instead create their own enterprises and employ fellow youngsters," said Collins Gumbu, the DTBi Business Development Manager.