Uganda’s inadequate road infrastructure has been blamed from the increased traffic congestion in the country, especially in the capital, Kampala. Credit: Amy Fallon/IPS

By Amy Fallon
KAMPALA, Feb 5 2014 (IPS)

There’s the good: “A slight delay of about a minute.”

The bad: “Terrible jam!!”

And the unbelievable: “No jam.” But as long as Kampala motorists and pedestrians are talking traffic, the eight Ugandan creators of new app called RoadConexion, are happy. For the time being, anyway.

“A problem we have here in Uganda is the roads, the infrastructure is terrible,” Lynn Asiimwe, the lead developer tells IPS.

“This is mainly the effect of bad governance and corruption. The effects are traffic jams, incomplete roads, and potholes everywhere.”

The 25-year-old, who is pursuing a master’s degree in inclusive innovation at the Graduate School of Business in the University of Cape Town, South Africa, works as a software developer with Access Mobile, a mobile technology company.

Asiimwe and her team worked on the app for free “out of passion”. And she hopes that the app, which won the Tech4Governance hackathon, a competition run by a local technology innovation hub called Hive Colab, will make leaders face up to these problems.

In 2010, President Yoweri Museveni promised to launch an investigation into corrupt road builders.

And in 2011 local newspaper, The Independent, stated that according to the Auditor General, money for maintaing road infrastructure was not well spent and that there were “alarming disparities in costs” as well as “shoddy standards, poor and late delivery by numerous contractors.”

But first RoadConexion needs to get people chatting.

The app lets users submit and receive real-time traffic reports on road repairs, accidents and traffic jams on almost any Kampala road featured on Google maps via the internet. Motorists and pedestrians can log into the site using Twitter and Facebook.

“We’re trying to get users engaged in the beginning,” says Asiimwe.

“If people realise that the traffic’s really bad they might start a conversation on their own and this conversation will hold these leaders accountable.

“We’re hoping that the officials will actually start doing something, start caring, actually start using the money in the right way.”

In Kampala bodabodas (motorbike taxis), matatus (mini-buses), cars, trucks and bicycles all jostle for road space.

According to local newspaper, the Monitor, there were 16,765 reported road accidents in Uganda in 2012, leaving thousands dead and hundreds maimed.

Asiimwe believes that corruption has led to “under-qualified companies taking on road works which leads to [sub-standard] work being done.”

“These roads tend to degrade in a few months leading to potholes and other forms of degradation. This degradation can’t handle the level of traffic, which results in traffic jams.”

According to a World Bank policy research document titled “Uganda’s Infrastructure: A Continental Perspective” providing the money and resource for road maintenance here “remains a challenge” with further investment needed to improve road safety.

Asiimwe adds: “These companies doing [sub-standard] road work need to be held accountable and we are trying to achieve that with RoadConexion.”

One bad example is a patch of road near Makerere University in central Kampala, where work was supposed to be completed by an international contractor by October last year but is yet to even commence.

“They already have the big banner up there saying who the contractor is, what they’re doing, how long the work is supposed to be for,” Asiimwe says.

“But when we got in touch they said ‘oh, we got into a few difficulties, funding didn’t come through on time’.

“The road is really dusty, the potholes are still there, but no one is letting the users know what’s going on.”

Currently RoadConexion receives between 50 to 100 views daily through computers and mobile phones, with most users checking in before the morning rush.

“Most people want to view, but few want to submit,” says Asiimwe.

“I’m realising that in Uganda we’re used to consuming, we’re not used to this mentality of sourcing,” Asiimwe says.

The development of RoadConexion follows the 2012 launch of Ma3Route, an app for Kenyan users. The mobile, web and SMS platform crowd-sources transport data and provides Nairobi road users with information on traffic, directions and driving reports.

“My desire to build a tool to help commuters in developing countries was further strengthened after I bought my first car once I got my first job and witnessed first-hand all the hours drivers waste in sometimes avoidable traffic due to lack of information,” creator Laban Okune tells IPS.

Okune, who grew up in Butere, a town in Kenya’s Western Province and went to Nairobi to study computer engineering, resolved to build a “triple threat tool” addressing traffic, directions, and reckless driving challenges faced by commuters in developing countries.

“The final straw was the road carnage witnessed in Kenya. Public transport vehicles traverse the roads, stuffed with people, swerve and overlap recklessly, causing them to roll off the road and spill passengers onto the ground.

“We lose so many lives.”

At least 2,000 in the space of nine months alone, according to one newspaper report.

Ma3Route users can receive directions and alerts on specific roads, report bad driving and even search number plates before they board a bus to check a driver’s track record.

Okune hopes to expand to other parts of Kenya. Ma3Route also has its sights set on Kampala and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

Fexlix Odongkara, director of the Automobile Association of Uganda, believes that traffic apps could be a good alternative to traffic reports on the morning and evening radio stations.

“Traffic jams in Uganda are getting worse. I’ve lived in this city for more than 30 years and every year it gets worse,” he tells IPS.

“The roads are not expanding in relation to the [increased number of] cars and the people. Apart from the small matatus and the bodabodas, there’s no public transport. Families bring all the cars into town.”

He said the only shortcoming of apps like RoadConexion will be that many people don’t have access to the internet at home or even in their offices. And if they do, some may not want to report traffic conditions because they may have already reported accidents to the police and are treated like suspects.

The World Bank has forecast traffic-related deaths will increase by 80 percent by 2020.

Odongkara says the biggest problem when it comes to Uganda’s roads is that too many people don’t know how to drive properly.

(l – r) Josiah Kavuma, Simon Lubambo, Joshua Businge and Brian Gitta, otherwise known as team Code 8, have developed a mobile phone app to diagnose malaria. Courtesy: Microsoft.

By Amy Fallon
KAMPALA
, Aug 13 2013 (IPS)

In his 21 years Brian Gitta has had malaria too many times to count. And over the years, because of the numerous times he has had to have his blood drawn to test for the disease, he has developed a fear of needles. It is little wonder then that he and three of his fellow computer science students worked hard to develop a mobile phone app that detects malaria – without the use of needles.

“I was two or three years old when I first contracted it,” says Gitta, who is studying computer science at Makerere University in Kampala.

“It’s very unusual to meet people in Uganda who haven’t had malaria. If you go to a clinic, you might find that 90 percent of patients have it.”

Annually an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 Ugandans die from the tropical disease, which is transmitted to humans by mosquitos carrying the malaria parasite. That makes it the country’s biggest killer, according to the NGO Malaria Consortium Uganda. Experts say nearly half (about 42 percent) of Uganda’s 34.5 million people are host to the malaria parasite, although they do not display any signs of being ill.“With this test people may be able to avoid a doctor’s consultation and treat malaria in its early stages before it causes anaemia and brain damage. Once this app comes out, the impact’s going to be great.” -- Moses Kizito, director of SAS Clinic

Gitta’s most recent bout of malaria, just before Christmas in 2012, was severe. He contracted brucellosis, an infectious disease contracted by the consumption of unsterilised milk or meat, and typhoid at the same time and had to be hospitalised for a month.

“I had to undergo lots of blood tests. I was in lots of pain and the doctor’s queue was long,” he says.

Gitta was bedridden during his convalescence, and during that time he had a light bulb moment. He imagined a “mobile medical centre” that offered a quicker and pain-free diagnosis without needles and pricks. Gitta envisaged using a small device for this – but it was a big vision.

But as soon as he recovered he set to work on realising it.

And this July in St Petersburg, Russia, Gitta, Joshua Businge, Simon Lubambo and Josiah Kavuma, known as team Code 8, were announced the winners of the inaugural Women’s Empowerment Award at Microsoft’s global student software competition, Imagine Cup. The all-male group was recognised for their development of an application that they call Matibabu, Swahili for medical centre.

In Uganda, malaria is diagnosed via either the microscopic examination of blood films or a rapid diagnostic test.

The microscopic diagnosis usually takes about 30 minutes or longer and requires a lab technologist. It is considered the “gold standard” of testing, as it is the most reliable method. It reveals the presence or absence of the parasite in the blood, the parasite species and the extent to which they have multiplied in the body.

However, a rapid diagnostic test can be done anywhere and without a qualified microscopist. It usually takes about 15 minutes to get the results, though it cannot show the number of parasites as a microscopic diagnosis does.

Matibabu uses a custom-made portable device called a matiscope, which is connected to a smartphone, to do a rapid diagnostic test. The user’s finger is inserted into the matiscope, and the application uses a red light to penetrate the skin and detect the red blood cells.

“It’s been shown that infected red blood cells have a different physical, chemical and biomedical structure from a normal red blood cell, hence [we] used light-scattering technology to determine the scatter patterns of both normal and infected cells,” Kavuma tells IPS.

“Through the difference in the patterns, the app is able to diagnose for malaria without a blood sample.”

The hardware has a light-emitting diode and a light sensor, and it transmits the test results to the user’s phone for processing.

Matibabu then sends the results to the Microsoft file hosting service, Skydrive, and these can be shared with the patient’s doctor almost immediately, preventing the long delay in getting results.

Code 8 says that Matibabu, which can currently only be used with the Windows phone operating system, will help pregnant women in particular. According to the World Health Organisation, half the world’s population is susceptible to malaria. Pregnant women, young children and people living with HIV/AIDS are especially vulnerable.

“When a pregnant woman gets malaria it affects the baby,” Lubambo tells IPS. “But if it’s able to be detected very early it could reduce miscarriages.”

However, the team hopes to have Android and other OS versions by mid-2014. They say when they begin introducing other versions for different platforms, they may start using file hosting services, like Dropbox, to store the results.

The students hope their device will be on the market within two years and say the application will be free to download. The hardware may cost between 20 and 35 dollars. The young developers concede that this is a lot of money for many Ugandans.

Currently, in Uganda’s private health sector both the microscopic diagnosis and the rapid diagnostic test cost under five dollars, Dr Jane Achan, professor at the department of paediatrics and child health at the Makerere University College of Health Sciences tells IPS.

Malaria affects mostly rural dwellers, she says, adding that in Apach district, northern Uganda, a patient receives over 1,500 infected mosquito bites a year. These people may not have access to smartphones.

“The urban settings are already a little more advantaged in that their health facilities are more accessible, they have more doctors and they have more accessible diagnostic facilities,” Achan explains. “At the end of the day this app has to be compared with what is existing and available.”

Moses Kizito is the director of private SAS Clinic in Kampala, where they test no less than 50 patients a day for malaria and receive eight to 10 positive results.

He says at the moment Matibabu seemed “quite expensive” but in the long run it may prove economical.

“Once people are forced to go to the clinic [with malaria] it’s expensive to manage the disease,” Kizito tells IPS.

“With this test people may be able to avoid a doctor’s consultation and treat malaria in its early stages before it causes anaemia and brain damage. Once this app comes out, the impact’s going to be great.”

Kavuma says that Microsoft has offered the group mentoring and business training, but they are considering other options to market and manufacture the product.

“We are planning on contacting Chinese companies for this,” he says.

Gitta hopes other diseases can be diagnosed in a similar way. “The future is bright and anything can happen…,” he says. “Let’s watch out for the next great thing.”