ICT and National guidance minister Frank Tumwebaze has challenged young innovators to come up with a local substitute for American social media app, WhatsApp.

“I want to challenge the innovators to come up with the “Katunyumye App” for the citizens to communicate with each other,” said Tumwebaze.

Katunyumye is a Luganda word meaning “Lets Talk.”

Tumwebaze was Thursday morning speaking at the National ICT Initiatives Support Program awards ceremony held at the Ministry headquarters in Kampala.

During the ceremony, a total of 40 innovators/groups of innovators were awarded certificates of participation while 12 of them walked away with Shs 2.5 billion as successful innovators of the year 2017/18.

“With more government funding, the ministry will be able to support more and more innovators whose applications prove to be having demand on the market,” Tumwebaze promised.

“We shall move to convince cabinet and parliament to regulate that all Ministries, Departments and Agencies to procure locally made ICT systems before foreign ones,” he added.

Second Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for East African Community Affairs Kirunda Kivejinja who attended the ceremony commended minister Tumwebaze for recommitting to letting young minds explore new possibilities by conceptualizing their biggest dreams in ICT innovation and acting on them to create jobs.

“As a country, we should stop being a net importer of these ICT products, become a net exporter and become participants of the intellectual library. For a long time, we have been relying on importing these ICT products but we now need our own component to be added to the intellectual library,” said Kivejinja.

He lauded the team at the ICT ministry for putting together the program and awards that would encourage young people to think innovatively.