Who Gets to Innovate for Government? Inside the Ministry’s Call for Innovators.

Uganda’s Ministry of ICT and National Guidance recently issued a national call for technology innovators and startups under the banner of building “the next generation of government systems with Uganda’s own innovators.” On paper, the initiative sounds transformative. Uganda genuinely needs local innovators building government systems instead of relying heavily on foreign vendors and imported digital infrastructure. The idea of a National Innovator Registry could potentially give local talent greater visibility and create procurement opportunities for Ugandan startups, developers, universities, and innovation hubs. In recent years, the Ministry has also increasingly positioned itself around themes such as digital sovereignty, local innovation, AI governance, and government digitization.

Yet despite the ambitious vision, the implementation details of this particular call have exposed major weaknesses that explain why many developers, startup founders, and innovators are alarmed.

As someone who has observed Uganda’s innovation ecosystem closely and personally experienced some of its shortcomings I believe the concerns being raised are legitimate and should not simply be dismissed as fear, negativity, or resistance to collaboration with government. They reflect a much deeper structural problem within our technology ecosystem: the gap between government ambition and institutional trust.

Many innovators are especially concerned about:

·       requests for repository or GitHub access,

·       the absence of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs),

·       weak intellectual property guarantees,

·       vague ownership protections,

·       unrealistic submission timelines,

·       and the imbalance of power between innovators and government institutions.

The reality is that a startup’s most valuable asset is often not the final product itself. It is the invisible intellectual foundation behind that product and that is; the architecture, implementation logic, workflows, integrations,deployment methods, data structures, optimization strategies and the accumulated technical insight developed over time.

Once source code is exposed prematurely especially in an environment where enforcement mechanisms are weak and institutional trust is low innovators lose leverage.

The Ministry has clarified that repository access is merely “recommended” and not mandatory. However, even requesting source-code access at such an early stage without a strong legal and procedural protection framework sends the wrong signal to innovators who already operate within a fragile trust environment. (lets pick interest in the case in which The Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) previously ran into major technical challenges with its Electronic Fiscal Receipting and Invoicing Solution (EFRIS). The disputes arose largely because the Chinese tech firm Aisino Corporation struggled to comply with URA’s mandatory requirement to transfer full ownership and source code of the system. The source code transfer failed because Aisino Corporation fell into a non-compliance status, they could not agree to explicitly hand over proprietary backend information to the authority.  

So, if a large international vendor resisted full source code transfer, how are small Ugandan startups expected to comfortably hand over their core intellectual property?)

The core problem is not that Uganda lacks laws or policies. Uganda already has copyright laws, patent systems, ICT innovation policies, data protection laws and intellectual property guidelines. The problem is that policy language and enforcement confidence are not the same thing.

The real challenges lie in slow enforcement processes, limited technical understanding within legal and procurement institutions, weak prosecution of intellectual-property violations,  procurement opacity, and a long history of we the innovators feeling exploited, sidelined, or excluded after disclosing their ideas.

In mature innovation ecosystems (strongly believing we will get there), governments understand a very important principle…..innovators submit capability demonstrations first not their crown jewels.

A properly designed innovation call usually separates concept evaluation, technical due diligence, security assessment, procurement review, and source-code escrow.

Uganda’s current approach appears to blur all these stages together and that is where the mistrust begins.

One of the biggest red flags in the current call is the request for GitHub or repository access at such an early stage. A government evaluator does not need full repository visibility to determine whether a system works, whether a prototype exists, or whether a team is technically capable. In my school of thought, at an initial evaluation stage, a live demonstration, screenshots, architecture overview, sandbox environment, or compiled executable is usually enough to assess viability. Better practice would involve a phased approach:

1.     request demonstrations first,

2.     shortlist innovators,

3.     establish legal protections,

4.     and only then conduct controlled technical reviews where necessary.

Not the other way around.

Another major concern is the complete absence of a clear Non Disclosure Agreements or confidentiality framework. This is extremely problematic. A serious national innovation program should include enforceable Non-Disclosure Agreements, evaluator confidentiality clauses, conflict-of-interest declarations, Independent review committees, penalties for misuse, audit trails showing who accessed what and clear legal remedies for innovators in case of abuse. Without these safeguards, trust collapses.

Let’s not forget that even private accelerators, investors, and incubators often operate under some form of confidentiality protection during sensitive technical reviews. Government institutions should be held to an even higher standard because of the scale of power and access they possess.

There is also the issue of unclear intellectual-property ownership protections. While the Ministry publicly states that it supports innovators and safeguards intellectual property rights, the call itself does not clearly answer several critical questions:

1.     Who owns submitted concepts?

2.     Can government agencies internally replicate submitted solutions?

3.     Can evaluators reuse disclosed architecture ideas?

4.     Does participation imply licensing rights?

5.     What happens if an MDA later procures a substantially similar system?

6.     How are disputes handled?

7.     Is there an independent arbitration mechanism?

Without explicit answers to these questions, innovators naturally assume the worst. And many have historical reasons for doing so.

The imbalance of power between innovators and government institutions only deepens the fear. For the new comers, and startups who have not faced the wrath yet, they worry about a scenario where:

1.     them as founders submit an excellent prototype,

2.     government gains insight into the architecture and workflows,

3.     they as the innovators are sidelined,

4.     and later a politically connected contractor delivers a suspiciously similar solution.

Whether such situations occur intentionally or systemically, the absence of safeguards creates an environment of suspicion. Trust is not built through speeches, press releases, or policy slogans.Trust is built through systems.

Another issue that cannot be ignored is the unrealistic submission timeline. According to the call, submissions opened on 19 May 2026 and close on 1 June 2026. That is an extremely compressed window for serious innovators who must:

1.     prepare documentation,

2.     sanitize repositories,

3.     seek legal guidance,

4.     prepare demonstrations,

5.     organize supporting materials,

6.     and carefully assess risk exposure.

Such timelines inevitably favour insiders, already-connected firms, or organizations that may have had prior knowledge of the process.

For many innovators, this entire situation highlights a broader problem within Uganda’s technology ecosystem. The country’s digital ambitions are growing rapidly, but institutional trust has not evolved at the same pace.

Uganda genuinely has talented developers, researchers, engineers, startup founders, and innovators capable of building meaningful government systems but innovation ecosystems do not thrive merely because governments issue calls for innovation. They thrive when innovators believe their ideas, labor, and intellectual property will be respected, protected, and fairly rewarded and that requires more than policy documents. It requires enforceable protections, transparent procurement systems, independent oversight, technical competence within institutions, and a legal environment where innovators believe they can seek justice if their work is misused.

When compared to neighboring innovation ecosystems such as Kenya, Rwanda, and increasingly Tanzania, Uganda still faces significant gaps in areas such as startup legal protection, commercialization frameworks, procurement transparency, investor confidence, and broader innovation trust systems. Kenya, for instance, has developed a more mature startup ecosystem supported by stronger incubation structures, deeper public-private procurement partnerships, and more established intellectual-property commercialization practices. As a result, innovators in Kenya are rarely expected to expose raw repositories or sensitive source code during the early stages of evaluation. Rwanda, on the other hand, has built much of its innovation ecosystem around structured regulatory sandboxes, staged pilot programs, controlled testing environments, and state-backed trust mechanisms that allow innovators to demonstrate solutions without prematurely surrendering core intellectual assets. These approaches have helped create stronger confidence between innovators, investors, and public institutions in those ecosystems.

The Ministry’s proposal is strategically significant, especially in the context of Uganda’s ambition to achieve digital sovereignty. Relying heavily on foreign-built systems presents long-term risks to control, security, and sustainability of national digital infrastructure. However, successful innovation ecosystems are built on trust, transparency, and clear engagement frameworks. For this reason, the process should be restructured into well-defined phases that guide how innovations are received, evaluated, protected, and eventually developed into impactful solutions.

If Uganda truly wants to build “the next generation of government systems with Uganda’s own innovators,” then government must first build something even more important:

TRUST!!!