Yesterday, Andela - which has been operating in Uganda for over a year - officially launched in the country. It hosted Uganda's tech community to an evening-get-together sort of where they made a couple of announcements.
One of them was the unveiling of Jackie Ochola as the company's first female Country Director for Uganda. A story I covered last week here.
During her speech, Jackie also made a couple of announcements and one of them was that Teddy Ruge aka TMS Ruge had been appointed to Andela's Global Advisory Council.
Related: Rwanda’s Paul Kagame gives a go-ahead to Andela’s partnership proposal
"We have an advisory council that advises the board of Andela Global," Jackie told me. The company has a board of about 11 directors including the former Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.
Ruge's appointment makes him the first Ugandan on the council that is charged with advising the company's board. He is one of the key people when it comes to Uganda's tech startup ecosystem.
In 2010, together with a group of others, they founded Hive Colab - the first tech hub in the country. He also co-founded Useremit with Stone Atwine. Additionally, he founded Raintree Farms.
Also read: Stone Atwine talks about Eversend and the intra-Africa money remittance problem
Jackie expressed her excitement about the fact that the company now has someone from Uganda on board as an advisor. "For the first time, we have a Ugandan representing us," Jackie - who joined the company close to a month ago - told me.
She also noted that a former CEO of MTN Uganda is also part of that advisory council. "The other interesting thing is that the former CEO of MTN Uganda is also on that advisory council," Jackie. "That's [Brian] Gouldie I believe," she added.
When I contacted Ruge for a comment, he declined saying that he "can't do any interviews at this time."
The company also used the opportunity to take the guests around for a tour of their new offices which are located on Bukoto Street. They are really cool by the way.
They moved into their new offices at the beginning of the year after putting up at The Innovation Village in Ntinda for close to a year.
Among the other announcements made at the event was the fact that the company now has over 100 employees and will be hitting the 200 mark before the close of the year. Additionally, the average age of a developer at Andela is 23 - 24 years.
Related: Andela must be expanding to Egypt with this recent job announcement
The company also spoke about a couple of initiatives that they have introduced in the recent past. One of them is Teen Code which is currently taking place in St. Mary's College Kisubi, Greenhill Academy, and King's College Buddo.
The other initiative is the Andela Women in Tech Initiative which currently has over 42 women developers.
The company also announced that their developer conference will be happening next week at their new offices.