Why Muni University Regional Hub Staff, Students were Equipped with Cyber Security Skills
Rahumah Kamara, a student at Muni University trying out surfing on one of the computers installed at the hub. Photo Credit; Clement Aluma
ARUA CITY – The National ICT Innovation Hub in partnership with Muni University’s regional innovation hub, has equipped innovators and hub staff with practical digital skills.
The aim is to integrate cybersecurity and regulatory compliance into their digital products from the early stages of development.
The training aligns with the digital transformation agenda of the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance, which identifies innovation, entrepreneurship and digital skills development as key pillars for advancing Uganda’s digital economy.
A five-day intensive training in cybersecurity, data protection and privacy compliance also aimed at strengthening the security of digital innovations emerging from academic institutions to ensure effective and sufficient online business.
Rahumah Kamara, a final year student of Bachelors of Science in Agriculture at Muni University said the training opened their eyes on security issues because their group information was left open to every member posing a big risk to their company.
“We are five people in our group and all our social handles and passwords are known by everyone and if one person’s email is hacked, all our information will be at risk so this training has opened the way that we should not allow everybody to access the company information,” Kamara said.
Enock Odipiyo, another student acknowledged that absence of IT personnel in their group posed a high risk to the company’s privacy policy, pledging to deploy one in subsequent projects to strengthen the security of the company.
“The absence of an IT officer in our group projects has been a serious hiccup, so in our upcoming projects, we need to incorporate the IT personnel to strengthen our security and safeguard our information,”Odipiyo said.
The coordinator of the Business Incubation Center Mr Edward Malunga said the training will go along in reducing risks of compromising the institutional information.
“People have been sharing links on social media and clicking which led to compromising institutional privacy, by accessing data which they are not supposed to see so with this training we will have a higher reduction of these cases that have been happening and put lesser risk to the institution,” he said
Andrew Mbabazi, a facilitator with Data Track Solutions Consul revealed that the growing scale of digital fraud highlights the need to build local capacity in cybersecurity and data protection among institutions and young innovators developing technology-driven solutions.
“With the emerging technologies, we are trying to help students and administrators so that they can identify and see the risks associated with online presence and how to overcome them, also among the students we took them through the innovator’s start up journey to see how do you begin and end without interruption because there is a lot of data sharing in the process,” Mbabazi noted.
According to the 2025 State of Scams in Africa Report by the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, cyber-enabled fraud causes an estimated $57.8 billion in losses annually across the continent.