AfroSoft IT Solutions officially launched UGGov Agent on Wednesday, an AI-powered platform that aggregates information from government ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs), provides it in multiple languages, and makes it accessible to citizens through messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram without requiring a trip to a government office.
The service is available on both smartphones and feature phones.
Ronald Katamba, the CEO and founder of AfroSoft IT Solutions, said the idea was born out of a simple but persistent frustration. “Someone wanted to apply for a passport but didn’t know where to start,” Katamba told journalists. “I asked him whether he knew the website of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He said he didn’t.” That gap between citizens and the information they are entitled to, he said, is precisely what the newly launched innovation is built to close.
The launch carried explicit political backing. Katamba said he had met President Yoweri Museveni on several occasions, crediting him with directly tasking him to develop a digital solution for ordinary Ugandans, an obligation, he said, he had now fulfilled.
“I’m happy that we have hosted the presidential advisor here. I think he’s the right person to make sure he can send a message to the President and tell him that the obligation he told me to do, I have already succeeded in doing it,” said Katamba.
UGGov Agent enables citizens to ask questions in any of the 16 languages currently supported by the platform and receive intelligent, real-time responses. Perhaps the most striking technical feature of the platform is its USSD capability. By dialing a code [to be announced later this month], users will be able to open an interactive AI chat session directly from a basic/feature phone. With smartphone penetration in Uganda still low, innovations that rely on USSD are increasingly significant.
Dr. Hillary Musoke, Senior Presidential Advisor on Agribusiness and Value Addition, spelled out the ambition in concrete terms: a farmer in Kalangala, a trader in Arua, a student in Mbale, or a fisherman could use an ordinary handset, the kind sold for a few thousand Ugandan shillings to ask how to renew a national ID, what the requirements for a passport are, where to register a business, or how to access government programs like PDM and EMOGA.
Dr. Musoke, who has known Katamba for a decade since they met in the United States, where Katamba was consulting for Silicon Valley technology firms, framed the launch in the context of Uganda’s broader economic strategy. He drew a deliberate line between the UGGov Agent and President Museveni’s stated priorities of fighting corruption and promoting import substitution through local value addition, pointing out that Uganda currently depends heavily on foreign-built ICT solutions despite having a growing population of locally trained technology graduates.
Katamba’s journey is itself a story of deliberate homecoming. Having consulted for firms in Silicon Valley, he returned to Uganda from the U.S. at the urging of Dr. Musoke to apply those skills domestically. He has since developed several products for government use, including an NRM party application, which is used to gather feedback from youth and share information about the ruling party’s manifesto. UGGov Agent represents his most ambitious undertaking yet, an attempt to build a single AI layer over Uganda’s fragmented government information landscape and make it universally accessible.
AfroSoft used the launch event to extend a formal invitation to government institutions (all MDAs), development partners, the private sector, and civil society to invest in the platform’s growth and help build what the company describes as a national AI ecosystem.
“At AfroSoft IT Solutions, we believe that artificial intelligence should not be limited to people with expensive devices or high-speed internet,” the company’s press statement read. “Every Ugandan deserves equal access to public information and services.” The company’s stated vision is striking in its simplicity and scope: one AI assistant for every Ugandan, on every phone, in every district, and in every major local language.
The USSD code remains unannounced, and the platform’s real-world performance is yet to be tested at scale across Uganda’s diverse and often challenging connectivity landscape. But as the country continues to grapple with the costs of technological dependence on foreign solutions, AfroSoft’s team is betting that homegrown innovation, backed by political will and a clear understanding of local realities, can begin to shift that equation; one question, one language, one phone at a time.
