The University of Dodoma (UDOM) will soon be making software to be used for Microsoft platforms such as Windows as well as Nokia mobile phones, it has been revealed.
The Chief Executive Officer and Senior Government Advisor with the Dar Teknohama (ICT) and Business Incubator, Mr George Mulamula, said in Arusha recently that the special programme to that effect is expected to start next month at UDOM.
The initiative will, at a later stage, also involve other institutions of higher learning such as the University of Dar es Salaam. Speaking during the official closing of the first phase training for local entrepreneurs in Arusha Region, Mr Mulamula said they have a special agreement with Microsoft, which is the world’s leading computer software and hardware maker, through which Tanzanian students can create software.
Microsoft’s operating system (Windows) reportedly runs in over 80 per cent of Personal Computers being used in the world today. The tech giant recently also acquired the Finnish Mobile phone manufacturing company Nokia.
If all goes well, students at the University of Dodoma will make software that will run in Windows computers and tablets as well as Nokia phones that operate under the mobile version of windows platform.
Tanzania, through the Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH), has signed a special agreement with yet another technology giant IBM through which local scholars will be allowed to make use of various patents filed by IBM to create software.
‘’That follows President Jakaya Kikwete’s recent visit to the United States where he toured the IBM facilities and the tech giant agreed to come to Tanzania and lay open all its patent for the local students here to try and make their own technological inventories based on the patents,’’ said Mr Mulamula.
The Dar Teknohama (ICT) training has benefitted 11 trainees in Arusha among them young Patrick Michael Moshi who has just created a special tourism marketing software known as ‘Go-Join Africa’ to run on the Android platform and soon to be made available on Google’s play-store.
Source Tanzania Daily News