Booting Up Tomorrow’s Innovators: The Bagezza Seed School ICT Club Launch
Bagezza Seed Secondary School nestles beside the Mubende–Fort Portal highway at Lusalira Trading Centre, about 15 kilometres south-west of Mubende Town, on the coffee-clad slopes of Kasambya County (0° 29′ 44″ N, 31° 17′ 02″ E). On 3 and 4 June 2025 that quiet roadside campus became the latest waypoint in Uganda’s digital-inclusion drive when the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), through its Universal Service & Access Fund (UCUSAF), unveiled a modern computer laboratory and helped inaugurate the school’s first ICT Club. The lab is one of more than a thousand that UCUSAF has installed in secondary schools, colleges and universities to make ICT a core subject at both O- and A-Level. Yet UCC officials reminded guests that sustainability is the real challenge: a 2018 RCDF audit showed roughly 40 percent of earlier labs languishing in semi-operable condition because routine faults went unresolved. UCUSAF now pairs each equipment grant with intensive “tooling and re-tooling’’ workshops so computer teachers can troubleshoot hardware and software issues and keep machines productive; even schools still awaiting computers receive similar capacity-building.
Against that backdrop, the two-day launch—facilitated by Christine Nambi with support from Mutunzi Tom Samuel—drew sixty-nine eager students: seventeen from S.1, eighteen from S.2, seventeen from S.3, eleven from S.4, and six from hybrid streams such as S.3 East or S.1 West. The healthy tilt toward lower classes promises long-term continuity, and the gender balance proved encouragingly even. Training blended keyboard drills, beginner coding puzzles and spirited discussions on internet safety, quickly transforming anxiety into curiosity. By the second afternoon every participant had signed the ICT-Club register, shared contacts and begun day-dreaming about the inter-school competitions that lie ahead.
Looking forward, Bagezza will not walk this journey alone. Kisubi Associated Writers’ Agency (KAWA)—UCC’s implementation partner—will anchor a three-tier support system that benefits teachers, learners and the wider community. First, KAWA will load the new lab with KAWA CONNECT, an offline digital library packed with syllabus-aligned e-textbooks, past papers, interactive STEM simulations and video tutorials in both English and Luganda. Learners can revise after class without buying costly data bundles, while teachers gain ready-made lesson aids and assessment banks that lighten their planning load. Second, KAWA’s Teacher Professional Development arm will run quarterly clinics in the lab, coaching staff on creative lesson design, block-coding projects, web-page building and the basics of robotics. By raising teacher confidence, the lab’s life-span—and its relevance to ever-evolving curricula—are both extended.
Third, KAWA’s Community Outreach programme turns the lab into a local hub at weekends and during holidays. Parents will be invited to evening “Digital-Parent” sessions on safe internet habits, online business opportunities and basic office-suite skills, empowering them to guide homework and even start micro-enterprises. Farmers’ groups can request data-entry tutorials for record-keeping, while local youth clubs may book the space for graphic-design or video-editing boot camps. Because the content is offline, even households without reliable network coverage tap into global knowledge simply by walking to school.
To keep momentum high, facilitators recommend stream-based club sections so every learner enjoys ample machine time, a baseline skills survey to tailor upcoming lessons, and monthly mentor check-ins with UCC and KAWA specialists. Additional PCs, a projector and a robust router will relieve pressure as membership swells. Most importantly, students should root their new skills in mini-projects that solve real problems—say, a market-price SMS bulletin for nearby farmers or a school-budget tracker—so digital literacy immediately serves community needs.
Learners left the launch buzzing. “The trainers made computers feel less scary and more like tools we own,” an S.2 pupil said while tucking away his notebook. With fresh equipment on the desks, teachers newly tooled for maintenance, and KAWA’s wrap-around services poised to lift the whole community, Bagezza Seed Secondary School is set to shine as Mubende District’s newest beacon of digital empowerment—proof that rural classrooms, when given the right blend of hardware, training and community engagement, can leap confidently into Uganda’s tech-driven future.
