 This is Zakira Veko Plant. It's located in Mu Tai, Ginger. It's seated on a hundred acres of land and this is where we plan to have a production of 5,000 fecos per year. Yes. This is predominantly a bus manufacturing plant. So on this facility we'll have the main production facility which is over there. This will have the body shop. Basically that produces the body of the bus, the bus frame and it has a lot of welding. Then we'll have a trim which will have the final trim of the bus where you put in the seeds and it's supposed to provide employment for over 3,000 people. Welcome to the YouTube channel. My name is Wadamaya, your one and only African content creator on a journey to celebrate African excellence. Before clicking on this video, were you aware that there is an electric vehicle manufacturing plant in Uganda? If you are not aware, don't stress yourself. That's why you have the annoying village boy on a journey to bring the hidden games in Africa back to life. This is why you need to like this video and help this channel get 1.5 million subscribers by the end of this year. You know what? If you are new to the channel, subscribe before I continue. Can you all believe that these electric buses on these roads are made in Uganda by Ugandan engineers? So is this a manufacturing plant or an assembly plant? This is a manufacturing plant. Basically we'll have raw materials coming. We'll weld them together. We'll have some pattern components come. That is motors, engines and then we'll put them onto the bus. So we start when there's basically material. And these are all done by Ugandan engineers? Yes, this is all done by Ugandan engineers. These engineers have been developed by the country. I am so proud of Ugandans and this is why I keep on telling Africans that it's about time we solve Africa's problem with African solution and that is the main aim of Chiramotos. Chiramotos' aim is to promote sustainable mass mobility solution for Africa. And what really shocked me the most is where the idea came from. The bus manufacturing facility is originates from Makari. Okay, these are my children. Oh wow. Okay, because I started with them from my classroom. Engineering, mathematics, I'm told you're an engineer, right? So I taught engineering mathematics to all of them. So that's really where the whole thing started from, right? It's an extracurricular activity. We have produced four buses so far that are electric and two buses that are diesel. These are 12 meter buses. So this plant specifically will be producing those buses. That's where actually we were with Paul even. He was my student then. Little young fellow at that time. Up to the time when, this was our 2007, five, six, seven, I had briefly gone to start a new university up in the north. So when I came back and joined him, I said, look, let's finish the assignment I had left. And that's where we were actually. Then along the way, some idea came. One of my former students who was a PhD student went to MIT and found some young people who were working on actually their issue was given that the U.S. has been to the space and all that with all those technologies, what can we use to address our earthly, you know, transport problems? So they're working on a scheme. What was it called? Vehicle Design Summit. Again, from there. And they asked if we could participate. I think that's where it started. And they said, oh, yeah, we can. So the engagement with MIT and MIT was coordinating consortium of 31 universities, some in Canada, California. I think some in Europe and the women was from Africa. So the first thing we did was actually to design. When you go on the Internet, you find a vehicle Vision 200. That was the very first vehicle we designed and built because each team was working on a component of that vehicle. Eventually, we converged in Turin, Torino, Italy. That was in 2008 from about May up to August, not to build the actual car out of the components which different teams had designed. And by August, I mean we'll come with that vehicle, which you will not see. And the team I went with, I'm sorry, none of them is here. That team I went with, they did such a wonderful work. And particularly in area of welding, our boy came at the top. I don't have him here now. So he came back. But the idea was that each team would raise money to transport that vehicle Vision 200 to his or her country so that their people can You couldn't transport? I didn't have the money. I didn't have the money. But I came here and announced to the whole country that we have built a vehicle. We now have the capacity. We can design and build and so forth. And these press people, I think, made some noise a bit about it, but they didn't see the vehicle. So we went in actually designing this and now showing it to people how we're going to build this using PowerPoint over. That was early 2009. November, there was a job vacancy in the university. Our vice chancellor and deputy vice chancellor were flashed out because we're told they didn't do a good piece of work. So the council now said, instead of recruiting to replace this immediately, we need to change the way we're recruiting, identifying these people. So for next six months, we're going to invite senior members of the university to apply to fill these positions on an acting basis. And so I pushed through deputy vice chancellor finance and the administration, although I'm known in arts and world. And they were supposed to act for six months. After six months, they didn't want to replace us. So I ended up working for four years deputy That is the opportunity, I think, which now crystallized this because as soon as I got in the office, someone, the president, got to know that I was engaged in all kinds of funny, funny things in the university. I don't know who reported to him. So he sends a soldier to my office. This guy comes into the office and said, I'm left in the sun. So are you Professor So he said, yes. So what's the issue? He said, I'm coming from the president. The president has heard that you are doing interesting things here. And he would like to come and see those things himself in person. But in addition to that, he wants to go to the department of history. He wants to go to the department of political science. Those are the only units. So it won't be a big occasion. He said, okay, so I'm so and so. And what do you, does he exactly want to see? Then he said, whatever you are doing. So that's how I went in. I think December 11th, no, 12th, that same year 2009 is now when he comes. He said, now, please you show me everything you are doing here. So I took him through the venture. We now organize that then went to the university, to the college, showed him what we're doing and then asked now, what do you want in order to move these things forward? That's exactly what he did. I think when the eighth, I was in my village 500 kilometers from Biai to dashed out to write those things with Paul and the team they presented. I think cabinet was really impressed with what we were doing, notwithstanding that they had not been providing us funding for research and that. So I think that really was maybe the beginning of the possibility of finding what we were doing. And that's how Chiramotos became a state-owned enterprise. But unfortunately, when that money was now released, it went through the minister of education. And it started splitting. The end of the day, the college ended up, I think, $4,500,000. The other, I think they gave us 10. The other four went to food science and then another one million went to vet departments. And so that's how it started. Now, when you go to the college, my college gave only $500,000 for this exercise which attracted the president. These are our administrators. So with those $500, we finished design, we crafted, and we built the very first vehicle. That live green car, we built it from the college, we created a shed in the basement of it. And when I brought the chancellor to see what I was doing, he thought I was just a joker. He came and he was very reluctant to go and see what I was doing with my people. But eventually we built and for the president, that was about two years later, for the president, he was excited. When I told him that there's something you want to see, I think 24th November, 2011, he came. And when he saw this, he said, can it move? Can it move? Because I arranged Paul to handle it. I said, yes. And unfortunately, you see, we had put it on a podium, a pedestal, a raised floor for people to see. But for him, when we got here, he said, we'll go. So he entered the vehicle. You should have seen the security running out. That we shall take the president with him. Full electric car. So he commissioned it. And during the speech, he said, what he's seeing is an African Renaissance, a rebuff. And so as far as he is concerned, he's going to do everything to support what we are doing, whatever money, whatever. So I picked on that and then started chasing the support that I needed from him. And with the support from the government, this is the future of Chiromotos. So behind me, we have the main production facility. It's going to have the warehousing of all the parts. There are materials when they come. It's going to have a body shop. What would have welding of the metal panels and we'll have metal pipes so the frame will be made in this workshop. Where are the material source from? The material source from companies within Uganda that do steel. And we'll also have automotive steel being delivered here. This automotive steel is basically used for buses to prevent them from having accidents and also have them be certified, properly certified. So this particular building would have solar panels on the roof that will provide power to this facility, auxiliary power. And as you can see over there, that's the size of the bus compared to the entire building. But how many cars will be produced in a day? How many buses will be produced in a day? It is, the capacity of this plant is 22 buses per day. So on a daily, we'll have 22 buses come off the line, but we'll prep more buses at the beginning of the line. Prof, you've seen the practical thing that you've done. Don't you think our education system is rotten? It's rotten. So Prof, you know it. It's rotten. So why are we still consuming that? I tried, I was previously a minister of state for high education science, you know. I tried to overhaul it. This was 2015, 2016. You can't believe, he knows. Fugs fighting that cause that I was pushing. Would have had a slightly different high education system. In other words, me as a professor, there's no point in me going to make notes out of published work and so forth. Why can't I start actually with these fellows right from the first year? Of course ideally, the primary, the secondary should also be addressed. But I think it was quicker to start at the top, but then go gradually downwards. So that by the time these kids come to the top, next time, they have already been duly prepared to fit in the environment. But that effort was sabotaged up to now. They are still forming groups. Oh, you got this report, this committee, nothing. Because my belief, even my, you know, a primary school, let's say the fourth, sixth year of schooling, we should have suddenly interested in these kids with hands on things actually, you know, not wait until he has graduated and then he's going to look for jobs, for example, for the same. This whole system is going to change. So the system of education, where we're just, I don't know which war was fought between France and I don't know. We even have to name as a part of a grasshopper, which I think it has nothing to do with me. So this is it. We should be in the realities on the ground. That's where we should go. You don't think we need an African solution for African problems? I don't know whether you call them African solutions or African problems. Yes, African problems. But my issue is what we should be doing is to groom the young minds, to actually do things. I think that happens in Europe, that happens in America, but ours because of, I think, partly colonization effects and so forth. We must first of all learn things to support the system. Yeah, colonizing. And then thereafter you can see if you can do other things. And you can see why I want to reform the education sector. Because this business of committing yourself, yes, yes, just reproducing what the professor here says, can't take you anywhere.