“About the Founder
Barbara Birungi Mutabazi is a co-founder and first managing director of Hive Colab, Uganda’s first innovation hub, business accelerator, and incubator for East African technology startups and whose mission is to build local tech capacity and scale up ideas with positive social and economic returns. She has managed and developed Hive Colab into Uganda’s leading Innovation and Technology Hub and developed relationships with Government, Development partners, and International organizations such as Microsoft, Intel, Google, and others. Under Barbara, Hive Colab has raised over 1M USD to run its operations and for its startups and signed contracts with organizations such as US State Department, British Council, Demo Africa, Palladium, Uganda Communications Commission, US Embassy in Kampala, Indigo trust, Hivos, Geneva Global, Seacom, Google among others. Barbara setup Hive Colab’s virtual Incubation arm and oversaw the execution of over 30 projects at the hub. She has developed strategic plans, business models, and fundraising plans, trained entrepreneurs and raised investment for Hive Colab and its incubates over the last 12 years.
Barbara was Uganda’s Country Manager for SPRING ACCELERATOR a DFID, USAID, and Nike Foundation project to put assets in the hands of adolescent girls. During this consultancy, she oversaw the implementation of the project in Uganda and supported the chosen entrepreneurs through training and fostering business connections.
Barbara has an MSC. in Information systems management from the University of Salford, Manchester, UK, a bachelor’s degree in Business Computing from Makerere University Business School, and a postgraduate diploma in project planning and management from Uganda Management Institute. Barbara is a 2014 Anita Borg Institute Change Agent award winner and a 2017 Young African Leaders Initiative ( YALI) Washington Fellow “
We provide Business Development Support trainings to startups and small medium enterprises with trainings on core business modules effective for businesses growth and development. We use a mix of business Assessments and provide bespoke BDS services Startup mentorship and aftercare services: Hive Colab supports and mentors early stage startups and ideas. Technical Training sessions: Hive colab conducts hands on training sessions for startups, entrepreneurs and technology enthusiasts. Our training includes Programming, 3D, Data Science, IOT, Graphic Design Community meet-ups: Community member gatherings to discuss and address matters concerning the tech community i.e (TGIF every first Friday of the month, 256 Talks topic discussions, Digital Friday tech discussions) Co-working space: Hive Colab We offer office space to your entrepreneurs that have gone to market office space at a subsidized rate to support them build their businesses Startup Incubation and Accelerator: Hive Colab offers support to young business that need to grow this includes 6 months accelerator, office space, high internet speeds, marketing and networking among others.
Hive Colab incubates companies and startups critical to Uganda’s technology ecosystem. We focus on technology verticals that we consider cornerstones to the country’s emerging digital economies: financial technologies (fin tech), medical technologies (med tech), educational technologies (ed tech), agricultural technologies (ag tech), and technology for governance (tech4gov).
