Evelyn Namara is a Ugandan technologist, technology

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

, and

corporate executive Corporate titles or business titles are given to corporate officers to show what duties and responsibilities they have in the organization. Such titles are used by publicly and privately held for-profit corporations, cooperatives, non-profit org ...

. She is the founder of Vouch Digital, a company established in 2015. Namara serves as a non-executive director on the boards of KCB Bank Uganda, MTN Mobile Money Uganda Limited, and

Village Enterprise Village Enterprise is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that equips the most vulnerable populations living in extreme poverty in rural Africa to launch sustainable businesses and break the cycle of poverty. As of 2024, Village Enterprise has ...

. She gained recognition as the first Ugandan to receive the

Anita Borg Anita Borg (January 17, 1949 – April 6, 2003) was an American computer scientist celebrated for advocating for women’s representation and professional advancement in technology. She founded the Institute for Women and Technology and the Gra ...

Change Agent Award in October 2012. She is the founder of Innovate Uganda.

Background and education

Namara was born into a family of four children, being the only daughter among three brothers. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from

Makerere University Makerere University (; Mak) is Uganda's largest and oldest institution of higher learning, first established as a technical school in 1922, and the oldest currently active university in East Africa. It became an independent national university in ...

. Namara also earned a Diploma in Sustainable Business and Responsible Leadership, focusing on Sustainability Studies, from The Swedish Institute Management Programme (SIMP). Namara possesses a diploma in Information Technology from the Uganda Institute of Information and Communications Technology, where she also obtained her Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification. Her professional development includes training in scalable internet services and Scalable Network Infrastructure facilitated by The African Network Operators Group (AfNOG). In 2013, Namara was selected as an East Africa Regional Fellow for the Acumen Fund East Africa Fellows Program. She attended an

INSEAD INSEAD ( ; French: ''Institut européen d'administration des affaires'') is a non-profit business school with locations in Europe (Fontainebleau, France), Asia (Singapore), the Middle East (Abu Dhabi, UAE) and North America (San Francisco, USA ...

Social Entrepreneurship Programme (ISEP) in 2018. Namara participated as an IDEX Global Fellow in the IDEX Accelerator Global Fellows Program in 2015. In March 2017, she was an

ICANN The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) is a global multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization headquartered in the United States responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several dat ...

58 fellow. In 2020, Namara was part of the FORTUNE-UN Department of State Global Women's Mentoring Program. Her early career included an internship at One2Net, where she specialized in

UNIX Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

programming.

Career

In 2006, Namara was among the women who co-founded the now-defunct LinuxChix Africa. She is also a founding member of Girl Geek Kampala. Since 2015, Namara has been the CEO and founder of Vouch Digital. Previously, Namara worked as a systems administrator at Orange Uganda Limited from 2008 to 2011. Following this, she served as the Country Director for Solar Sister, an enterprise focused on distributing solar lamps to rural women lacking electricity access, from 2011 to 2013. In 2014, Namara held the position of Regional Manager for East Africa at Beyonic Inc. From January to June 2015, she was the Implementation Manager for Blended Learning at Wings Learning Centres. Namara served as an ambassador to the United Nations Internet Governance Forum in Brazil in November 2015, representing the Internet Society. She reprised this role for the 2016 forum in Mexico. She was Vice Chair for the ICT Association of Uganda from January 2016 to October 2016. Subsequently, from November 2016 to March 2018, Namara coordinated activities in Eastern Africa for the Africa Civil Society on Information Society (ACSIS). She also served as a Policy Outreach fellow at the

Internet Society The Internet Society (ISOC) is an American non-profit advocacy organization founded in 1992 with local chapters around the world. It has offices in Reston, Virginia, United States, and Geneva, Switzerland. Organization The Internet Society ...

from 2017 to 2018. From 2017 to 2019, Namara was a global ambassador for the IAMTHECODE foundation and contributed as a team member to Bridge17.org. She worked as the Manager for Community Engagement and Special Interest Groups at the

from 2018 to 2021. Namara joined the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) as a Project Manager and Researcher, serving from November 2021 to October 2022. Since October 2021, Namara has been an Independent Non-Executive Director for MTN Mobile Money Uganda Limited (as of 2024). In 2022, she was appointed as an Independent Non-Executive Director to the Board of Directors of KCB Bank Uganda. She also serves on the Refactory Advisory Board and is a member of the board of directors for

. At the Global Digital Inclusion Partnership, Namara was the Senior Partnerships Manager & Researcher from December 2022 to January 2024. In January 2024, she was promoted to Senior Programs Manager. Namara has also contributed as a trainer and instructor for The Africa Network Operators Group (AfNOG) and AfCHIX. She chaired the Change Agent ABIE Award selection committee.

Founding of Vouch Digital

Namara's entrepreneurial journey in technology led her to The Innovation Village. In 2015, she joined a team aiming to develop a platform to mitigate fraud and corruption in the distribution of international

aid In international relations, aid (also known as international aid, overseas aid, foreign aid, economic aid or foreign assistance) is – from the perspective of governments – a voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another. Th ...

and donations from humanitarian agencies, focusing on improving transparency in procurement and distribution processes. An opportunity arose when a development organization sought to outsource the creation of a system for tracking and delivering entitlements to last-mile recipients. Namara was tasked with the project, provided with an initial capital investment of $25,000 by the organization, and given a one-month timeframe. She assembled a team, and together they conceptualized an electronic voucher system designed for the distribution of entitlements, goods, and services. In 2016, Namara and her team developed their first prototype, which was subsequently implemented with Mercy Corps for projects in Northern Karamoja. Vouch Digital also collaborated with other international NGOs, including Catholic Relief Services and the World Food Programme. In 2019, Namara rebranded her company to Vouch Digital, with a new focus on developing an API to power digital incentives through interaction with multiple software intermediaries. Vouch Digital provides voucher management solutions for NGOs, corporate businesses, and governments, facilitating the delivery of digital entitlements globally, which can be redeemed at authorized merchants. By 2020, Namara and her team had reportedly served over 250,000 beneficiaries and transacted more than $3 billion with them in the Karamoja sub-region.

Awards and recognitions

* Recipient of the Anita Borg ABIE Change Agent Award in October 2012. * Named an Acumen Fund Fellow in 2013. * Received the Overall Entrepreneur Award in the Agriculture sector at the Women In Africa Club Summit in Marrakesh, Morocco. * Awarded the ICT For Development award at the Uganda Communications Commission ACIA Awards in May 2017. * Recognized as Woman Innovator of the Year at the MTN Innovation Awards in both 2017 and 2018. * Finalist for the Cartier Women's Initiative Awards in 2018. * Honoree, Top 100 Most Influential People of African Descent (MIPAD) Under 40, in the Business & Entrepreneurship Class of 2018, recognized by the UN. * Achieved third place in the Africa Women Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum Awards in 2019.

References

External links