Nokia is committed to promoting local applications that are relevant to the African market. “We shall help the local developers market their applications on our Nokia website and through other media channels. This raises the developers’ platform for marketing their applications and thus exposes them to more business opportunities,” said Annie Njenga, the Developer Outreach Manager for Nokia East and Southern Africa.

Njenga was speaking during the handover of certificates to developers whose applications were published on the Nokia Ovi Store. The function took place at the College of Computing and Information Sciences (CoCIS), Makerere University.

She encouraged the developers, many of whom were CoCIS students to customize their applications in order to serve the needs of the Ugandan market. “Majority of the Ugandans are downloading personalization apps (ringtones, wallpaper), games, news and many of them have Nokia phones. So tap into this market and we shall help you make your apps global,” she added.

Some of the developers whose apps were published on the Ovi Store praised Nokia for sponsoring their training conducted by the College of Computing and Information Sciences between March and May, 2011. This training was aimed at expanding the capacity of software developers in Uganda and improving the visibility of their applications.

Abdu Sekalala, whose app has been downloaded over 140,000 times encouraged other developers especially the students to embrace such training opportunities in order to enhance their skills. Sekalala has three apps on the Nokia Ovi Store. His colleague, Kevin Opio, developed an app that translates English into Kiswahili and vice versa. Opio also urged the developers to identify and cater for the needs of Africans.

Grace Kamulegeya, the lead trainer advised the developers to also come up with applications for Android phones and to commercialize their applications.

Nokia promised to hold more trainings for the developers next year.