Ronald Leonard Egesa

A lot has been said since the Easter Sunday remarks by Archbishop Cyprian Kizito Lwanga about the central government-Buganda question. The archbishop must have been busy so as not to notice that the Mengo establishment held talks with the central government in 2005 and reached an agreement which preferred devolution (regional tier) to the old feudalism that some of the conservatives were pushing for, only to turn around and reject something that was unanimously endorsed by the Lukiiko.

The learned bishop relates the Buganda-Uganda question to the Vatican-Italy question. He should note that the Vatican controlled the Italian economy through and through whereas in Uganda, the capital can be shifted and the economy is not controlled by the Mengo establishment through and through, therefore they cannot boast the same bargaining power as the Vatican boasted.

While the archbishop has a right as a citizen to express his view on the political climate in the country, he ought to remember that he has a duty of not dividing his flock on political grounds. It is therefore my humble prayer that the aArchbishop steers clear of political talk.

Ronald Leonard Egesa,
Kampala
Email: leo@ronaldegesa.com

Published in the Daily Monitor of April 20, 2010

Born in late 1984, I can easily pass for a ‘Museveni kid’. I have admired Mr Museveni all my life and he has inspired me in setting out to achieve my dreams. I am however confused now, since after 23 years in power, I’m seeing things that I would expect to find in a Failed State- like what we have been taught about the Amin regime. We are seeing unwarranted detentions, reports of torture in ‘safe houses’, poor condition of roads even in the capital, corruption and embezzlement, claims of nepotism in national institutions, reports of land grabbing by army men, people dying of famine, rampant riots, claims of vote rigging, use of force to suppress frequent demonstrations, rise of ritual and contract murders and rampant school fires. The question still lingering in my mind is: when will the ‘fundamental change’ dream be realised? Any honourable leader or freedom fighter ought to accept failure and pave way for fresh blood to come in with new ideas.

Ronald Leonard Egesa,
256-752442375

This was published in the letters section of The Daily Monitor newspaper of August 21 2009

I am greatly disappointed in the city council engineering team in Kawempe Division. There seems to be a general lack of vigilance in the leadership of Kawempe Division and Kampala as a whole. Since the start of the year, I have observed that the state of Sir Apollo Kaggwa Road at the junction with Makerere Hill Road between Makerere College School and Chez Johnson has been terrible and nothing is being done.

In the past five years, I have witnessed three accidents involving deaths at that point and two of them resulted from someone trying to dodge a pothole. The problems in this area stem from the failure to properly drain water and take it off the road surface. I do not think working on this joint would produce a budget deficit for Kawempe Division or Kampala City Council and even if it did, such a deficit would justify the need for more financial support!

Another dangerous point is the pothole just before the roundabout at Kubbiri on Bombo Road. All vehicles and bikes try to squeeze on the narrow section of the road where the tarmac is still intact. This started like a small pothole, but it has eaten up the three quarter width of the road and it will not be long before we see lives lost at this spot.

KCC, it is my humble request that you take it upon yourselves to always fix these small potholes before lives are lost!

Ronald Leonard Egesa,
Kampala
leo@ronaldegesa.com

Published in the Daily Monitor on Monday August 3, 2009

I have been an admirer of Dr. Besigye but of late, perhaps because of his long stay in the political scene, I am beginning to realise that he has turned into another typical Ugandan politician. Recently, he criticised the re-appointment of Justice Faith Mwondha as the IGG. But let him read the letter Ms Mwondha sent to the Speaker of Parliament in which she stated her case.

Dr. Besigye should also know that there are Ugandans like the President and I who bought the IGG’s interpretation of the supreme law of the land. He should know that the attorney general’s advice is not binding and the President can choose to ignore it.

Published in the letters section of The Daily Monitor of April 20, 2009

I would like to thank Mr Mwambutsya Ndebesa for his analysis of the Mengo-Central government ties that appeared in the Sunday Monitor. It was well founded and educative.

Mr Ndebesa pointed out that the problem between the kingdom and the central will exist until such a time when the two stop ‘cutting the deal behind closed doors’ and address the issue using institutions. He also said the government should address the issue as a national matter which also applies to the relationship between the central government and other regions.

I commend Mr Ndebesa for the thorough analysis and I would love to see more of such commendable writings showing up in our media instead of printing pictures of naked women as we often see in some media.

Ronald Egesa, Kampala
This was published in the letters section of the Daily Monitor Newspaper 2008

By Davis Weddi

FINALLY, Uganda’s first mobile-phone banking is set to roll out its services. Ronald Egesa, a software developer, is putting final touches on the new service which will be available on all mobile phone networks in the country.

The mobile banking service is to be managed by a software branded “Smart Cash” developed by Mobitrix Uganda, a company owned by Egesa.

“Realising the surge in the banking and telecom sectors for the last five years, we felt that there could not be a better time to introduce mobile banking in the country,” Egesa explained

Targeting the six million mobile phone subscribers the service is expected to usher in a new model of managing personal finances in Uganda.

“After two years of thorough research and consultations, we have decided to roll out a three-pronged mobile banking platform. We are out to pioneer state-of-the-art mobile banking technology in Uganda,” Mobitrix said in a statement issued on Thursday.

Smart Cash is comparable to a Kenyan version called M-Pesa, but according to Egesa, his mobile bank will be able to offer services on an international scale. It will enable customers who have accounts to access the bank for transactions even when abroad.

The statement explained that Smart Cash “Is cashless, it enables banking from anywhere there are mobile phone services, users can pay for utilities, you can save as little as sh5,000, you can send money to your relatives or friends in any part of the country, Smart cash service will be accessed on all the mobile networks, Smart cash works on a wide variety of cell phone types.”

Asked about how to open a mobile phone bank account, Egesa said, “Mobile phone users will buy scratch cards from airtime dealers, login into the easy-to use smart cash system using their handsets and then load the money on to their account. Once the money gets on the account, it can be used to make payments, transferred to another account or just left there for future use.”

Opening a bank account has been made simple. “It costs next to nothing,” Egesa said and explained that all one has to do is to send an sms to a short code that the company will soon unveil to the public.

The services customers will get include: Transfer of funds from their Smart Cash account to another Smart Cash account using the recipient’s phone number, save money as little as sh5,000 and pay for utilities such as electricity and water, Pay TV, view and check their accounts with organisations such as NSSF and Microfinance institutions.

Egesa also noted that deposits and transfers will be charged a small fee of sh200 making mobile banking very conveniently cheap. He said that in the case of transfer or payments, the sender or payer will incur the same small charge on his/her account. All balance check transactions are free of charge. Users will not incur charges of sms received.

Earlier this year, we reported that Ronald Egesa had developed school management system and was distributing it free of charge to interested schools. So far hundreds of head teachers have expressed interest in the system.

Published on: Sunday, 16th November, 2008 in The Sunday Vision

I am disappointed by Celtel Uganda which is currently playing a song of this musician about to come to town. I got embarrassed when someone called me on Sunday morning and this song that carries a secular message was played back to him before I picked his call.

Celtel is using this as a way of marketing themselves and their activities but it is injuring our reputation. Two committed Christians claimed that calling me and listening to such music spoilt their Sunday.
When I called Customer Care, the arrogant woman who picked my call told me they selected the numbers randomly. But this is bad marketing behaviour.

Ronald Leonard Egesa
0752442375
This was published in the letters section of The Daily Monitor of July 16 2008

Egesa shows how the new system works

THE creation of local software to manage jobs in Uganda is now thriving. In March this year, The New Vision reported of a ‘Bill Gates’ who had rolled out one of these products — the Schools Management Information System (SMIS) written in visual basic programming language.

Recently, Ronald Egesa, who runs Magezi Solutions, said he has rolled out a multi-function general school management system. It is called the Magezi Harvest, locally developed from Egesa’s small computer laboratory based in Kansanga, a suburb of Kampala.

His system is superior because it has an embedded system that can store data that can be retrieved for up to 20 years.

While SMIS runs only on Microsoft OS, Magezi Harvest is a cross-platform and cross-browser web-based software designed with the latest technology suitable for academic record management.

Egesa said the product was developed in the last two years. Testing was done in close partnership with Old Kampala Secondary school for one year.

“This is a sophisticated system, but it is easy to use,” Egesa said.

He said the opportunity to create this software came when the headteacher at Old Kampala said he wanted a system that could produce a report on any student’s performance, complete with the student’s photograph.

“We wanted to increase efficiency and accuracy in producing students’ progress reports. We wanted people to know that local talent can be used to develop locally suitable complex systems better than the imported systems,” Egesa said.

The system handles records of all the students’ marks, positions, grades and teachers’ comments. It generates mark sheets and statistical sheets to help the school analyse overall performance of the students and teachers as well.

Magezi Harvest can work on one desktop and also in a networked environment. Its security is idiot-proof, Egesa said. It can run on both proprietary and open source platforms, that is, either Windows or Linux operating systems.

Egesa said the system was free because of the bureaucracy involved in approving software products. However, when a school signs up for the system, they foot the bill for training the headteacher, bursar, teachers, librarian and other users.

There are also extra components that can be added if the school wishes to have them and these are premium. They are the accounting module, stock-taking module and library system.

Once the system is installed, all users can have access to it, depending on the hierarchy of permissions for usage.

To get the Magezi Harvest, one can contact the developers at www.magezi.net.