.png)
.png)
So many companies have decreased or even had to shut down due to COVID-19. This is just a time where it’s essential to look and see beyond the pain of this reality and simply focus on what we can do and how. Our main target preliminary was universities and skill-training institutions. The Coronavirus pandemic did indeed affect our business too, as most schools and universities here in Uganda completely closed for over 6 months. Some are still closed. The schools expressed an overwhelming transition to e-learning, to an adaption to digital tools in general, which is why we created a digital toolkit to inform schools about useful tools and tricks in relation to e-learning. We have reviewed and improved our stakeholder mapping strategy from this year’s research to align with the new needs of our specific target groups. We have utilized this time to perfect our core functionalities as well as, vigorously testing our additional platform that targets employers. By staying on the ground in Uganda we have connected with many great organizations and also signed some very exciting new partnerships and customers for 2021. Highlighting our new paying customer, Stanbic Business Incubator
We are grateful to see ourselves surviving through this hard time and are taking all the learnings we can to heart. The importance of digital services such as Diwala is apparent during a time where physical interaction has and is still being regulated all over the world.
As we are a remote-first company, our CTO’s passion for remote and digital processes and structure has safeguarded us to keep alignment and continue the optimization of our processes. It has truly shown us its value and has enabled us to continuously improve our platform to meet our stakeholders’ needs.
We have also learned that In difficult times, it is important not to stress out or lose faith. Support each other and keep calm; there is always a solution for most problems, if not it is essential that we iterate or even change directions to serve who we design for in the best possible way.
Q1 and 2
Q3 and 4
This year was filled with continuous user testing, and we are happy to announce that we have verified payment willingness with over 50 Ugandan organisations. We have also connected with some truly amazing organizations that will officially be part of the developments in 2021. Some of them are:
This year we have got more issuers of the Diwala platform, and many more to come next year!
Our team is growing, and this year we hired 5 new employees from all over the world! We welcome our two new Ugandans Irene Mutuzo and Graeme Ampeire, UX designer Carmel Kelly from Dublin, and our new software developers Sanuja and Rakesh from India.
Curious to read more about our journey? Read our previous article about year 2019 here https://www.diwala.io/post/the-story-of-diwala-year-2019-building-inclusive-technology