Kampala, Uganda has selected a social networking mobile phone app based on cultural cuisines for submission to the Global Mobile Premier World awards in early 2014
The app, selected from a shortlist of ten Ugandan-built apps submitted for the AppCircus Kampala event last week, is named Ffumba, after the Luganda word for “cook”.
Developed by a group of University students as a “recess project”, Ffumba provides a forum for food enthusiasts and amateur cooks to upload, share and develop traditional African recipes and fuse them with modern styles and ingredients.
Speaking for the group of five students, developer and co-Team Leader Victor Kyeswa said their interest was piqued because every time people talked about food around them, it was Italian, Mexican and all cuisines besides African.
“So we started talking about a recipe-sharing app so that people could talk about our traditional, cultural food, and then we kept adding to it until we came to Ffumba,” he said.
Curiously only one group member, Adviser Dominic Walusimbi, was actually interested in cooking and had studied Food and Nutrition as a subject in high school, so together with Kenneth Otto, he was charged with doing research amongst different tribes in Uganda to establish the different foods and cooking styles available.
The app, “will help Ugandans eat healthier foods and promote our culture, as well as other African cultures. It will be used across Africa where we expect people to contribute information about their traditional foods and cooking styles,” Timothy Mugabi Lubega said while presenting at the AppCircus.
Ffumba, he explained, would be a forum focused on preserving different cultures and their cuisines from all over the continent, allowing users to submit food ingredients that the app will use to create recommended African recipes from among those submitted by users.
“Ffumba will automatically select for you the healthiest combination of food while telling you the food nutritional components, their disadvantages and advantages to your health,” Lubega enthused.
The app will also incorporate diet planning and entertainment planning services.
“Dominic had friends who were now working as chefs in restaurants so we got a lot of guidance from them as we continued with the project. It started off as a recess project but we took it seriously and found ourselves adding more and more features as time went along,” Kyeswa said.
Being selected as winners at the AppCircus Kampala was a surprising bonus. The Ffumba team will be sent to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona where they will present their app to a global jury alongside other shortlisted apps from various countries worldwide.
“We are looking forward to Barcelona. Of course we all want to go but that will depend on the funding we get. Luckily, the timing will not interfere with our schooling, since the event is in February next year,” he added.
Simon Kaheru
