#148 – Stephen Dumba on Empowering Uganda With WordPress Education and Community Initiatives

Transcript

[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.

Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, how school educators are bringing WordPress to the people of Uganda.

If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to wptavern.com/feed/podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.

If you have a topic that you’d like us to feature on the podcast, I’m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to wptavern.com/contact/jukebox, and use the form there.

So on the podcast today, we have Stephen Dumba.

Stephen has been a high school teacher in Uganda since 2007. He specializes in WordPress, computer repair, and teaching IT skills. As the National Coordinator of the ICT Teachers Association of Uganda, he mentors, both students and teachers in ICT.

An active WordPress community members since 2019, Stephen organizes WordCamps and conducts online, and in-person, WordPress training across Uganda. Initiatives like Each One Teach One, and 1000 WordPress Ninjas aim to promote the use of WordPress nationwide.

Stephen regularly speaks at WordPress events, and focuses on integrating WordPress into education and community building.

I suspect many listeners might not know about the landscape of WordPress and ICT education in Uganda. Stephen is here to correct that today.

We start off talking about the ICT curriculum in Uganda, the initiatives to equip schools with computer labs, and the surge in student interest for ICT education.

We then discuss how WordPress is beginning to see adoption in Ugandan educational circles and Meetup communities. Stephen talks about how investing in WordPress turned his business around, and the larger impact it has had on education and employment opportunities.

But why is WordPress so embraced in Uganda? Stephen emphasizes its simplicity, extensive plugin options, and community support. He also describes the vibrant WordPress community initiatives, including regular Meetups, and the goal to host a thousand attendee WordPress event in the future.

Towards the end of the podcast, we discussed Stephen’s vision for building future WordPress leaders in Uganda, and the significance of sponsorships, and financial support, to sustain and grow these initiatives.

If you’re curious about how WordPress is shaping communities and education in Uganda, and the broader implications of ICT education in different regions, this episode is for you.

If you’re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you’ll find all the other episodes as well.

And so without further delay, I bring you Stephen Dumba.

I am joined on the podcast today by Stephen Dumba. Hello Stephen.

[00:03:44] Stephen Dumba: Hi Nathan.

[00:03:46] Nathan Wrigley: This is going to be a really interesting episode for me. There’s going to be an awful lot in here that I do not know about. We’re not going to be talking about WordPress, the code. We’re going to be talking about WordPress, the community, and how it’s grown up in the country where Stephen lives, which is Uganda.

And before we begin that, Stephen, I just want to give you the opportunity to tell us a little bit about yourself, your history with WordPress, the job that you do, and then we can unpack all of the wonderful things that you are involved with in Uganda. So over to you, your little potted bio.

[00:04:23] Stephen Dumba: Thank you, Nathan. I am Stephen Dumba. By profession I’m a teacher, but many times when I tell people that I’m a teacher, the next question is, where do you teach? Unfortunately, I’m not stationed in a particular school where I’m teaching, but I’m a teacher by profession.

But I’ve been, for the past 15 years, interested in computer repair. And then of recent, around 2018, I got invited to WordCamp Kampala. So that’s where my WordPress journey started.

I attended a WordPress event in 2018, at the close of 2018, and then I got an opportunity to speak at WordCamp Entebbe three months later. That was in 2019. And then from then on, I discovered that, yeah, I think this is a field that I can put all my energy on.

So I started developing websites in WordPress. But most importantly, I found that many of my fellow teachers were not well versed with web design and WordPress. So because of my role as the National Coordinator of the ICT Teachers Association of Uganda here, I took on the role of mentorship, a voluntary mentor. So I’ve trained many teachers in Uganda on how to use WordPress, and that’s how we are growing as a community.

[00:05:44] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you for that. That was really enlightening. So just to reiterate, you began your journey in 2017, having not used WordPress before. But also at the same time as that, a history of teaching, and with a current role of the National Coordinator of the ICT Association of Uganda, which sounds like a fairly influential role.

What I mean by that is I’m guessing that if you make some decisions about what CMS may be on offer to the school children in Uganda, your decisions count for something because of the role that you have. Would that be fair to say, your decisions matter?

[00:06:23] Stephen Dumba: I wouldn’t say it’s a personal decision, but it is a decision of a couple of us as teachers. You see, what we call the ICT Teachers Association of Uganda is a congregation of teachers who teach ICT as a subject here in Uganda, across the entire country. So basing on the conversations we have on our platforms, majorly WhatsApp, you come up with a decision even when no one mentions it. You find that it is easier to build websites with WordPress. And all the reasons are there for us to see.

Previously when I was still teaching, we used to teach web design as one of the topics in our subject, but we were using very rudimentary tools. We would even use stuff like Office to come up with something like a website.

When I got to know about WordPress, shared it with a few teachers, and by the way, I was introduced to WordPress by a fellow teacher, and by then he was the national coordinator of the ICT Teachers Association. He’s called Rogers Mukalele.

So he invites us to a group of WordPress users because he wanted us to improve on our skills, our web development skills. And then when it came that there was a WordCamp in 2018, I remember it was December, either November or December, WordCamp Kampala. We all went there just to see how are these people making websites, because they’re telling us in just a day you can come up with something so beautiful.

And when we went there and, true to his words, people had at least a homepage in just one or two hour session. So from there on, everyone was convinced.

So for us who had gone, we started sharing with those who hadn’t gone to this event. And so when Arthur organised WordCamp Entebbe in 2019, many teachers were like, we also want to go to WordCamp and learn how to use WordPress.

So that’s how I came up with the idea, wow, so I can speak at this event to the teachers. Because usually they take people, the way they communicate with teachers, it may not be as straightforward or as simple as us teachers understand ourselves.

So I thought I’d give this talk, and good enough this talk is even on, my very first is on WordPress TV. Things went on, and so people started seeing us as the go-to people for WordPress. And because of that, we had to keep on improving our skills. And so all other WordPress events that were organised in Uganda, I struggled hard to make sure that at least I catered for that particular audience.

So finally, Rogers goes out of this role of national coordinator and everyone was like, I think Steve, you can do this. Steve, be our national coordinator, please. Who’s going to teach us WordPress? Who’s going to mentor us in this field? And because of our association, people believe in what we say.

So when we tell them it’s good to have WordPress, we give them the figures of course, 43% of the web. And then when you come to government agencies here, I even wrote an article about 10 common websites in Uganda that are using WordPress, of which we have State House, that’s the President’s official home. He’s using WordPress. Then we have the tax body in Uganda, switched to WordPress. We have universities in Uganda are using WordPress.

So we were giving just those big, big, big agencies as examples. And then when we tell you that you can do something in a day, you can come up with an idea and build something in WordPress, and maybe improve that later, everyone would like this.

First of all, not many of our schools in Uganda have websites. So teachers had space where they could practice their WordPress skills. They would go to the head teacher, tell them, I developed some WordPress skills. Can I volunteer to build a school website? And so the teacher would volunteer, and then ask us some questions, we would guide them. And where we fail, we would also go to the more advanced community, the WordPress community of Uganda. And they’re also very helpful.

[00:10:27] Nathan Wrigley: Can I ask, where I live in the UK, we have an education system called the National Curriculum, and what that means is that basically every child receives, certainly when they’re very young, the same subjects. So if you’re a child in an entirely different part of the country, you’ll still be having basically the same palette of subjects, you’ll be doing maths, and history, and what we call ICT. And the ICT, in our case, stands for Information Communication Technology.

Is that the same in Uganda? Do you have one sort of curriculum which covers the whole country, or can different areas and different schools pursue whatever they like?

[00:11:08] Stephen Dumba: In Uganda we also have a curriculum developed by the National Curriculum Development Center, and it is across the country.

[00:11:15] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, thank you. And also, what is the current state of technology like in Uganda? So where I live there’s lots of desktop computers. There’s lots of mobile phones. I’m curious as to how people are consuming the internet. Is it generally a keyboard with a screen, or does it tend to be more like a mobile phone?

[00:11:37] Stephen Dumba: The adoption of technologies in Uganda is still very, very, very low. Although, since the lockdown, there has been some improvement. However, I also like to mention, what we call the Uganda Communications Commission. They have been instrumental in making sure that secondary schools, that is for students from 13 to 18 years, they’ve ensured that all secondary schools at least have a computer lab of at least 30 users, 30 user stations.

But this is something that came around more seriously in 2013, because then ICT as a subject was introduced to advanced level. That is for the, 17, 18 year olds. It came as a compulsory subject.

By the way, in Uganda, students start learning ICT at 13. Below that, the curriculum doesn’t cater for that. So the curriculum starts it as an option at 13 years onwards. But in 2013, the government thought it wise to introduce this as a compulsory subject for the 17 and 18 year olds, what we call A Level here.

And because not all schools would afford to have computer labs, our communications agency, the Uganda Communications Commission, through their project which is now called UCUSAF, they came up with an idea and stocked computer labs across the entire country. So the chances of finding a computer lab in a secondary school are almost I think 90, I’ll give a figure of 90%.

[00:13:13] Nathan Wrigley: And would it be fair to say that home ownership of computers is not particularly widespread? Or would it be that most people going home would have access to a computer or a mobile phone, once they’re outside of the boundaries of the school?

[00:13:28] Stephen Dumba: It is not widespread. It’s not at all widespread. Computers will only be found in offices, and that is big offices. Computers only be found now in secondary schools, apart from a very few privileged schools that will have maybe a hundred computers.

[00:13:47] Nathan Wrigley: So young people, their exposure to computers is typically going to be in their educational institute, their school, or the college that they go to. And is the interest in ICT, well, is ICT as a subject popular in the same way that it is in my country? I mean, it’s almost the most exciting thing you can do to a child where I live, to put them in front of computers.

It seems that there’s just something about that interaction of the keyboard, the mouse, the computer, and all of the myriad things that it can do that is tremendously exciting. And also it’s a conduit to learning almost every other subject as well.

But is it something that the children themselves are excited about, learning how to work with computers? Or is it more that, a bit like maybe something like maths is here, you’re just kind of told you’ve got to do it because you’ve got to do it. Like I say, is it popular?

[00:14:45] Stephen Dumba: ICT is a very popular subject here in my country. I’ve even given the numbers. I remember, the last school where I taught, you would have a class of 80 learners and you had only 30 computers. And the kids had to struggle into the lab just to be the first on the computer. You just have to come out with ways of grouping them, and making sure that each of these learners has a chance to touch and use the computer.

For example, because of this demand where I was, I was often asked to come to school earlier than the official reporting time. For example, being at school at around seven so the kids can use the time between seven and nine, for those who did not have the chance to practice, to use the lab. And then even after work, after five, you’ll be obliged to stay at school up to around eight, so that you give chance to other learners, because the interest is just too much, just like the UK.

[00:15:46] Nathan Wrigley: So there’s loads of demand, but not enough places to put that demand. At the moment there simply aren’t enough devices for the amount of children, in this case, who wish to learn.

It’s an exciting thing to be involved in then I guess, because I think a lot of teachers, certainly in the UK, face the problem of disinterested children. Children who don’t wish to study a particular subject, and yet they’re being made to teach it.

Whereas it sounds like you’ve got the opposite problem. You’ve got children who are extremely interested to learn, but aren’t able to because, well, there’s a big queue to get into the ICT lab, and you’ve got to take your turn. Come before school begins, or wait after school has finished in order to give it a go. Okay, that’s really interesting.

[00:16:31] Stephen Dumba: If I can add, it’s for that reason that at a certain point we take these kids through a test to decide who will stay with us in the computer lab at a certain level. So when you have a class of 80 students, where as a teacher you could imagine, the African way, the problem is when it comes to time for assessment exams, are you going to spend two days in the computer lab examining in just one subject? No.

So what we do, if there are 80 students in your class, they’ll have to go through a test that will determine, and unfortunately we usually choose the best performers. And so we could say we need only 40 students. And so you leave out 40. Not that they don’t want, they are really interested, everyone is interested, but you don’t have just enough equipment to serve them.

[00:17:21] Nathan Wrigley: Again, linking back to the UK because it’s basically what I know. In the UK the ICT curriculum covers a lot of ground, it isn’t just about the web. And I wondered if that was the case as well.

Obviously the WordPress component is about building something which could go online ultimately, perhaps a website or something like that. But also they learn about programming languages, and how to write things in code on their local development environment, and what have you.

Do you cover any of that as well, or is it mainly to do with the internet, websites, WordPress, that kind of thing?

[00:17:55] Stephen Dumba: Not at all. In fact, websites is just part of the curriculum. They learn, of course, the obvious stuff, it’s basically learning Microsoft Office programs, and then web, and then there is security, a little bit of that.

In our new curriculum, right now we don’t have coding, we don’t have programming. What we have is a bit of HTML and CSS before we involve them in WordPress.

[00:18:21] Nathan Wrigley: Do the students have career opportunities outside of school, once school has finished? Is that maybe why it’s so popular? Apart from the fact that it’s obviously quite interesting sitting in front of a computer, you know, it opens up a whole world of possibilities. Is there also a credible career path with that as well?

Because I can imagine that if you were successful, let’s say you were incredibly good at building websites with WordPress, I can imagine that the career, the opportunities, would allow you to step outside your own town, your own region, your own country. And so I just wondered if there was a career path that the children could understand and conceive. That it would allow the world to be more available to them.

[00:19:04] Stephen Dumba: As teachers, we have shown them some career paths, like the standard web developer, stuff like that. But given that, in our country, the chances of getting employed are really so minimal. So most of these kids are learning it, first for the interest, but then they are also looking at the opportunities. They look at people like us that, yes, he has his own web development agency, that is Steve. You look at Rogers, he’s also surviving his way because of that skill.

So even when we are going in our mentorship talks with them, we show them that, learn this skill and you’ll be self-reliant after school. You’re not going to depend on someone who’s going to ask for your CV, someone who’s going to ask for your experience when you’re just fresh out of school. Many of them are learning it right now because they want to make a buck by themselves.

[00:19:58] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, that’s brilliant. Thank you. And can I just ask, why WordPress? Given all of the different bits and pieces out there. I mean, obviously you attended the event in 2017, and that turned your head towards WordPress, but I’ve got to imagine there’s more to it than that.

Is it just that it is a tool which is, well, I mean for a start it’s freely available? You just go to a website and there it is, and you can download it, and there’s loads of software available that allows you to install it on a local environment, so you don’t need to pay for a hosting company or anything like that. What were the reasons that WordPress was the CMS of choice, the software of choice?

[00:20:35] Stephen Dumba: First of all is the ease with which you create this website. So I’ll give my personal example. And by the way, the teachers and learners follow my story so much, and it’s an inspiring one.

Around 2015, I hired a friend of mine to create a website for me. And we went through ping pong for some months, and then even after all those months, the website wasn’t really what I wanted. And then they told me that it’s because you’re using a friend to do it. You’re doing it cheaply. So you have to get some good money and hire another web developer.

So I got my, I think it was three months salary, I gave it to a person to develop a website who did not come up with a website even after a, you get it, yeah. Now look at, after a whole year you don’t have a website, some sketchy. And then in school we were teaching using Publisher. I don’t know if you heard about Microsoft Publisher, we were using it to create websites. And the websites are so sketchy versus the websites we see on the web.

So here you go to an event in the morning. You arrive at nine, get breakfast at 10, go into a session at 11, and at 2 you have a website. Who wouldn’t want to use that tool? And in fact, all my interests right now, like I told you before, I repair computers. So the only people who knew that I repair computers are the people in my community.

Now that I learned WordPress, I came up with a website, a website using WordPress. I think I used maybe two nights and it’s out there. And now because of this website, I’m traveling across the country. Now the people who are following my story will also want to do their own websites because of the ease with which you can use it to come up with a deserving website. A website that a client will look at and say, wow, this is what I wanted.

And it is even easier, even if you looked at another website for inspiration, it is easier to come out with a similar website in WordPress, as opposed to the other hard coding, that is one.

And then the other thing is, there’s one thing that I really look at, WordPress has a community in Uganda. You’ll simply call David, hi, I have a problem here. David will help you. Then you say, who can help me with this? And then they’ll lead you to another person.

Then look at the problems like when you want to monetise your website, when you want to add payment gateways to your website. All the other options that are available, it’ll take you a lot of effort to get them working. Whereas in WordPress, you’ll just dream of something, oh, I need this, then go to the plugin repository and the plugin is there. Even the free ones are working.

Just for example, as teachers, during the lockdown we wanted students to be able to access lessons when they are at home, while we were also in our homes. On WordPress, you’ll just go and look one LMS, and it creates a very perfect learning solution for you, just within no time. So I think there are very many reasons why you should love WordPress.

And let me tell you what, even the big agencies here, they were using other technologies. But we have been following them in the last maybe four years. All the big ones are getting to WordPress. So if we don’t know the reason why we want WordPress, perhaps they know the reason why they want WordPress. You get it, eh?

So even those, the naysayers who are still doubting WordPress, when they look at State House going for WordPress. When they look at our revenue agency going for WordPress. When they look at our Business Registration Bureau going for WordPress. When they look at our universities going for WordPress, then who are you? You have to give us a very big reason to choose any other.

[00:24:18] Nathan Wrigley: I guess modern WordPress with things like built-in patterns, so the ability to just basically click a button and have a pre-designed page, or row, or selection of blocks, really leans into that real ease of putting something on a page immediately.

So in the olden days, you would probably still have to have a variety of different plugins to wrangle to get things the way that you wanted it to look, but you’d also have to have a degree of HTML knowledge. And it sounds like, you know, especially for the people who are just beginning with WordPress, those kind of features are really key for getting that excitement going. Look, log in, click that button, and then that one, you’ve got a page, look at that. And you get something almost immediately.

How do you disseminate, or how do you communicate with all the other staff where you want to share your experience about WordPress? How do you communicate with all the other teachers throughout the country to coordinate what you’re doing?

[00:25:21] Stephen Dumba: Like I said earlier, I am the National Coordinator of the ICT Teachers Association of Uganda. The ICT Teachers Association of Uganda brings all teachers of ICT in Uganda together.

So one of the ways, yes, we have a website, ictteachersug.net, but for easier communication we use our WhatsApp platform. Right now we are using WhatsApp majorly. So when we are there, sometimes someone will ask a question, and someone will say, can you ask Stephen? He has been there, he has done that. And when they ask you, you tell them the whole story.

What we did, we came up with a few initiatives. For example, every Tuesday evenings 8:00 to 9:00 PM East African time, we have what we call Each One, Teach One. We believe no one has the monopoly over knowledge. There is something I know that Nathan doesn’t know. There is something that Nathan knows that I don’t know, and a hundred others don’t know.

So what we do in this session, Each One, Teach One, we get a topic that is on everyone’s mouth. And then we get one person to come and facilitate, and then you take them through an hour. They’ll ask you questions and stuff like that. And these topics are diverse. Sometimes it’s just motivation. Sometimes it’s really, how do I get started with WordPress? And then, how do I deal with SEO? The topics are very diverse, but we come together because we are a fraternity, and we have that objective of bettering ourselves inside and outside our profession.

[00:27:01] Nathan Wrigley: So that’s an online event, you do that via the internet. But you also mentioned that there’s a fairly vibrant WordCamp community that goes on with a variety of events across Uganda each year. Did I get that right?

[00:27:14] Stephen Dumba: Yeah. Now look at this, the story goes, Rogers comes and invites us to join the WordPress community of Uganda, which was based in Kampala then. And then three months later, we have an event in Entebbe, under WordPress Entebbe Meetup. So from there, the teachers who had traveled miles to come and attend this event are like, can’t we have such events nearer our places?

So Rogers comes up with the idea, I think I can start a WordPress Meetup in Jinja, that is 80 kilometers away from Kampala. And then in collaboration with existing meetups, we ask that these events should also include sessions for teachers and learners, not only the advanced topics. Also get to the basics, the beginners, the absolute beginners. So Rogers initiates WordPress Jinja Meetup.

After the lockdown, Moses initiates the WordPress Masaka Meetup. This is another teacher. And then in Lira we have another WordPress also initiated by a fellow teacher.

All these are done in collaboration with the existing meetups, and it is one community. But because of these distances, Stephen cannot come from here and travel 400 kilometers to attend a meetup. So it is better if a meetup group is started in that town. So even of recent, we have another Moses who started another meetup just outside Kampala, but Lira was started by Emmanuel Angoda. And more meetups are coming up by the way, because many teachers are interested.

[00:28:52] Nathan Wrigley: It does sound like the teachers are the backbone of the whole thing. The WordPress community is largely being driven by the teachers because, you know, they attend this one thing, and then go and start another little satellite meetup, which then is sprouting another meetup and so on. But it does sound like the teaching network is the thing which is really driving the community over there, which is interesting.

[00:29:17] Stephen Dumba: That would be a lot of pride on our side so that the teachers are the backbone of the WordPress community. Like I said, teachers work hand in hand with existing meetups because we engage with these people every other day.

Our request was that we work hand in hand to have more inclusive WordCamps, or more inclusive meetups. While the previous meetups were for advanced users, that is in our own thinking. Things were too advanced for us. You go to an event and people are speaking APIs.

So we were like, how about we had a meetup, we had a WordCamp where even an absolute beginner, a person who only knows how to click, can come up with a website on that day. And this was a welcome idea, so we are working hand in hand. The thing is that, with teachers, at least they have places where they can put these events, as in the schools. They have somewhere to start. It is easier for them.

[00:30:16] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I was going to ask about exactly that, about the location, because that can be quite a thing where we are, finding a location can be really hard. But I guess that’s a good short circuit, isn’t it? Because the teachers have access to a building. They have access to a computer lab, which they can use for the evening. Okay, I see. That all hangs together perfectly, doesn’t it? The school is, in a sense, the central place where it all happens, and the teachers are the people who make it happen in those locations. That’s fascinating.

That’s really interesting because here in the UK,, the WordPress community is usually not really the school, there’s no part of the educational system which is involved in it. It’s typically business owners, people building websites, people who’ve got companies where they’re selling something into the WordPress space, those kind of things. And they’re typically done in, I don’t know, venues of an evening, but schools don’t appear to be part of it. So there is quite a difference there.

Is there anything, Stephen, that you would say, if you could stare into the future, sort of five years or something like that, is there anything that you would like to happen? Now that could be as straightforward as, well, it would be great if we had more computers, or more members in our communities. I’m just thinking, five years, what would you like to be different in five years than is now with the Uganda community?

[00:31:42] Stephen Dumba: One thing we want with the community, in five years one of our dreams is to have an event with a thousand attendees. An event with a thousand attendees is testament of the years of efforts that we are put into building this. It’ll be really heartbreaking if after all those years of pushing WordPress, you still have an event with 50, 80, 200 attendees.

I want to see my students as speakers. I want to see them as organisers at events. I want them to come up and say, that’s our teacher. That is the person who introduced me to WordPress. And I want to see many of them.

Indirectly, this is good market for those who are in the business of web design, like I intend to be. The more people that we know who are interested in WordPress, it’ll be easier for us to mobilise people for events.

There’s things that really pain us, sometimes we have an event and all you have is international sponsors. You don’t have any local sponsor for this event. It shows you that the people who are in charge don’t know about WordPress yet. So let us train these young ones, and when they are in charge they’ll be very willing to support, to give back to the community, even if they don’t attend.

[00:33:02] Nathan Wrigley: What a fabulous, fabulous thought. The idea of an event of that magnitude with homegrown talent, if you know what I mean. The people that over the last many years you have been teaching, who are themselves the speakers, and presumably would themselves be now the teachers of the next generation as well.

So you’re kind of describing a thing which self perpetuates itself into the future. It just keeps going, and you’ve got the older generation who’ve been doing it for a while, the ones who are currently working inside of WordPress. And at the same time you’ve got the people who are coming up through the education system. That is such a fabulous, fabulous, idea.

Another question around that then, Stephen, is the financial thing I suppose, talking about how we get these events to work. Now, you mentioned that events are in schools and things like that,

but I’m just wondering if there’s something that you

would like to say regarding, I don’t know, sponsorship, or

people reaching out to assist in some way or

other.

[00:33:59] Stephen Dumba: one thing is. our community is entirely, we work entirely on our own resources, personal resources. It’s voluntary, but the demand for WordPress lessons is so high. And of recent, we started, an initiative called 1000 WordPress Ninjas. and our target was with three friends of mine.

There is a teacher called Noeline and another teacher called Simon. So we came up with the idea, let us at least give ourselves a target of training a thousand youth and teens in WordPress, especially those who are finding it hard to continue with school. is, easier to get those in school.

But there are many others who are there that we interact with. They are struggling with school. So you want to teach them, stuff like WordPress and life skills, indirectly life skills, but majorly WordPress.

But then they really want to associate with us. So they ask, but what really shows that I’m a WordPress Ninja. Then we ask them, what do you want? Then they say, don’t you have a T-shirt? But they cannot even afford this T-shirt. So while I can offer the lessons free, I don’t have enough money on me to buy T-shirts for a thousand learners. So there are those small things that any other person can come up and any idea and say, perhaps I will get a thousand T-shirts for these a thousand WordPress.

Ninjas Anything in anyway. And then sometimes there are places that are far remote that would also be interested, but we go there only when we can afford. So even if they ask me to go for this session this weekend, they ask for a session this weekend. As long as I don’t have enough money on me, I tell them maybe next month.

And sometimes I can push it to two, three, even six months. But if. There is a way that we can come up with something small. It can facilitate one of us to go to that place maybe 600 kilometers away, stay a night, have a day or two with them, and then come back. But otherwise, everything is voluntary by using our own pockets But any assistance would be Very welcome.

[00:36:10] Nathan Wrigley: I think it’s the perfect place to end it, Stephen. Before we do end it, I’m just going to ask, where could people reach out to you? Either personally or perhaps that’s a website for the institute that you are in charge of? The National Coordinator of the ICT Teachers Association of Uganda. Anywhere that we can find you, email, social media, whatever you like.

[00:36:31] Stephen Dumba: Yeah. So I’m on X, people can find me on X and my handle is SteveUG. Our website of the ICT Teacher Association is ictteachersug.net.

[00:36:47] Nathan Wrigley: All of these links will head into the show notes, so if you go to wptavern.com and search for this episode with Stephen, you’ll be able to find all of the links there. All I can say is thank you so much for all of the hard work that you’ve put in so far. It sounds like you’ve got a really interesting, growing community over there, and also good luck for the future. I hope that in the next five years you do indeed put on a WordCamp with a thousand people. That would be absolutely marvelous. Thank you for talking to me today.

On the podcast today, we have Stephen Dumba.

Stephen has been a high school teacher in Uganda since 2007. He specialises in WordPress, computer repair, and teaching IT skills. As the National Coordinator of the ICT Teachers’ Association of Uganda, he mentors both students and teachers in ICT.

An active WordPress community member since 2019, Stephen organises WordCamps and conducts online and in-person WordPress training across Uganda. Initiatives like Each One Teach One and 1000 WordPress Ninjas, aim to promote the use of WordPress nationwide.

Stephen regularly speaks at WordPress events, and focuses on integrating WordPress into education and community-building.

I suspect many listeners might not know about the landscape of WordPress and ICT education in Uganda. Stephen is here to correct that today.

We start off talking about the ICT curriculum in Uganda, the initiatives to equip schools with computer labs, and the surge in student interest for ICT education.

We then discuss how WordPress is beginning to see adoption in Ugandan educational circles and Meetup communities. Stephen talks about how investing in WordPress turned his business around, and the larger impact it has had on education and employment opportunities.

But, why is WordPress so embraced in Uganda? Stephen emphasises its simplicity, extensive plugin options, and community support. He also describes the vibrant WordPress community initiatives, including regular meetups and the goal to host a thousand-attendee WordPress event in the future.

Towards the end of the podcast, we discuss Stephen’s vision for building future WordPress leaders in Uganda and the significance of sponsorships and financial support to sustain and grow these initiatives.

If you’re curious about how WordPress is shaping communities and education in Uganda, and the broader implications of ICT education in different regions, this episode is for you.

Useful links

WordCamp Kampala

WordCamp Entebbe

WordPress Entebbe Meetup

Jinja WordPress Meetup

Masaka WordPress Meetup

Lira WordPress Meetup

ICT Teachers Association of Uganda

State House of Uganda website

National Curriculum Development Center

Uganda Communications Commission

Uganda Communications Universal Service Access and Fund – UCUSAF

Business Registration Services Bureau