Take on unexploited internet opportunities - ICT minister

MINISTER | ICT | INTERNET 

Innovative use of internet landed Daniel Ahikyirize, 21, from Kasese district into online forex trading.

“While other young people are interested in music, pornography, games, among others, for me with my average background, I pursued opportunities on the internet,” Ahikyirize said.

On a weekly basis, Ahikyirize says he gets between sh1.5 and sh2m. 

“In a month I get at least sh7m and these figures vary depending on the trading capital.

But it’s about 20% to 30% returns off the trading capital in a month,” Ahikyirize said.

According to Ahikyirize, he discovered many business opportunities through U-tube.

“I gave most of them a trial but they did not work out. Sometimes you can do work online but you are not paid partly maybe Uganda doesn’t have payment options available.

Some of the businesses I tried out before I settled for forex trading included drop shipping, publishing a-box and amazon.

Then I started a U-tube channel and started generating content but all didn’t work out,” he said.

He said that he was encouraged into forex trading by the story of a successful young South African called Sandie Shezi who has made a fortune in online trading.

“I got interested to know more about this business in 2019 and I extensively researched about it through google, through U-tube in order to find out something so legitimate.

I discovered it was indeed possible to make money through forex trading online and be somewhere,” Ahikyirize said.

He said his first year was actually a year of practicing and learning about the business.

Forex trading is to do with exchanging currencies but instead of doing it physically at a Forex Bureau, this time round it’s done online.

In the process, broker links the trader to the currency markets. However, according to Ahikyirize, the broker should be regulated. 

“Unregulated brokers aren’t good to work with because it’s where deposits and withdrawals are made,” Ahikyirize said.

Ahikyirize said that he only started after mastering the business and a lot of things have since happened.

By this time, Ahikyirize had finished his 'A’ level but because he had mastered the business, he was forced to dropped out of school in his first year at the university.

“I was becoming so nice at the business, I was making profits so I had to leave school for trading. I was at Ndejje University doing civil engineering because I was finding some future in trading and I started looking at it as a full-time career,” he said.   

However, Ahikyirize notes that he found it hard to convince his parents that quitting school was a welcome option.

“But I told them this is my way they finally allowed to give me time. But within a shortest period of time, I was becoming a successful young man,” he said.

He claims that after mastering the business, even the media started trailing him and from there he started uploading some educational content on U-tube and other social media platforms and that people we picking it up.

“Then I wanted to find out on how to help the other people out especially the young people since were are in the country where young people have no jobs and people are struggling around.

Then I came up with a platform called Forex Bulls in order to teach people on how they can go about trading either as a career or a side hustle,” he said.

He said Forex Bulls focuses on equipping people with content about financial markets most especially forex and stock markets.

“People most especially the youth are now picking up interest most especially the youth in the age of 20-30 and I’m getting excited that within the shortest period of time I have done this, we have gotten a big number of people getting interested in this,” he said.

He added; “We have equipped and trained over 5000 people at the moment on how to trade the forex markets.

We usually do have seminars where we interact face to face with our students.”

Forex trading according to Ahikyirize is a booming business in South Africa, Nigeria and many other parts of the world.

“We sell when the value of a currency is reducing and buy when the value is rising,” Ahikyirize said.

What is concerning Ahikyirize is the fact that many young people using internet know about such ideas but they are not bothered about digging deeper for economic profitability.

According to Ahikyirize, many people find difficulties in online related businesses due to many scammers.

But he advises that before you get into any online business, it’s paramount to first seek the right knowledge.

“The fact is if you get into the market without right knowledge, it is a bit difficult to profit and you will face many scammers who are all over on the internet promising massive returns to the people and yet they are not legitimate at all,” he said.

The state minister for ICT, Godfrey Kabyanga tasked the young to take Akikyirize’s direction and use internet well by exploiting the good opportunities offered pledging government support. He indicated that through the ICT ministry, government has since established an ICT innovations fund under the National ICT Initiatives Program (NIISP) to support young people with beautiful ideas.

“We have many who have so far benefited and we even have an ICT innovation hub at Nakawa and many young people are already there coming up with innovations ideas,” Kabyanga said.

Government last year selected the best 45 innovators to benefit from sh7.4b innovation fund to support and develop a holistic ICT innovation ecosystem.