Bridging the Digital Divide: How Updated Devices Support Our Mission

New Computers at The Centre

Earlier this year we received new computers for some of the staff at the Action in Africa Centre in Nakuwadde along with all of the 2024 scholarship students cohort. These were brand-new HP Elitebooks.

Receiving these laptops was timely because some of the AIA staff had laptops that were 10 years old. In addition to freezing, rapid battery loss, broken keys, and dim screens, they were no longer compatible for software upgrades. They were generally inefficient.

Here is the experience of some of our interns and staff who received the new laptops and how they are using them to serve the Nakuwadde community.

Nabulime Gloria

Remember Gloria? She graduated from university in 2022 with the support of the Action in Africa Scholarship, she is now working with Action in Africa and transforming the lives of other children. Gloria works as the Education program Aide and if you visited the Centre in Nakuwadde, you would most probably find her calling an after-school program facilitator who has run late. She had one of the old laptops and would often complain about it freezing in the middle of her registering students for an AIA program. Now Gloria has a brand new laptop and she is in a much better position to keep track of the students’ participation in the AIA programs. This information she collects is important in the evaluation of scholarship applicants.

Mugisha Harrison

Harrison is one of the interns of the 2024 University Scholarship cohort. He has been an active participant at the Action in Africa centre since he was only a young boy playing soccer in the AIA compound. His box paper file is probably still on the Action in Africa shelves because he was at the centre when we still used to keep our records on paper. But now Harrison is writing the records of other young children who visit the centre using his brand new laptop.

As a university scholarship student, Harrison’s laptop is his to keep—even for his university education. He wants to become a lawyer and has already used this laptop to apply for university admission. He has also used it to build his professional skills as an intern, creating work presentations and reports.

Nansubuga Sandra

Sandra is our new Action in Africa scholarship officer, and so she was one of the first staff members to receive a new work laptop.

She says the laptop’s performance has made her work much easier. She uses it to manage the payment of school fees for all the scholarship students, formulate documents and complete bank transactions at the click of a button. She used an old laptop when she had just started working at Action in Africa, and she had many challenges with its battery making her work much harder. All that is in the past now because of the amazing community that supports the work of AIA.

Sarah Nininger

Sarah, you probably know Sarah. If you don't, she is the Executive Director at Action in Africa. For three years she lived in Uganda setting up the Action in Africa organisation, but she has since moved back to the USA to amplify the Action in Africa fundraising activities.

Now, Action in Africa operates with both a Uganda and USA team. And because of improved connectivity, Sarah says she can collaborate better with Uganda staff at the Action in Africa Centre, and with new laptops for Sandra, Gloria and Harrison. Sarah is better placed to efficiently supervise the operations of AIA as if she was in Uganda.

This is the power of bridging the digital divide. By buying airtime for the AIA centre, or one month of internet, the Action in Africa team across the world will be able to continue serving the children of Uganda.