The Story of SeatPack
Arnold Leon Mugagga is a Ugandan Entrepreneur. He studied Architecture at Nkozi, UMU and he loved design and innovation.
After university, he found a well-paid job at an architecture firm, however one pivotal day, he watched on the news that millions of children in rural areas in Africa have to study without adequate classroom furniture.
Either children have to squeeze on the few seats available or they do not have any furniture at all and study while sitting and writing on the floor. This made him very angry and he wanted to change it!
So, he went into research and visited many primary schools and found out that rural schools simply cannot afford wooden furniture costing up to Ugx200,000 each, and that wooden lockers often get stolen from schools.
He wondered “Can I develop a solution which is cheaper and the children can carry home so they can study wherever they are?”. So, he developed the idea of the SeatPack, a school bag which comes with an attached classroom chair and a writing board.
The idea sounded great, but how to get started?
Arnold made his first sample from a window frame which was way too heavy. He then thought about designing a foldable aluminum chair and ordering it from China.
However, then Covid came and no shipping could be made. He had to change. He then thought about finding locally available resources and started making chairs from bamboo. Bamboo grows very fast and is a low-cost and sustainable alternative to wood. Finally, he seemed to be onto something. He made a simple school bag with the foldable bamboo chair and a writing board, all costing Ugx50,000
Now, the next problem was money. Who would pay for this solution? He realized that the schools liked it, but still didn’t have the money to pay for it.
He came up with the idea to make unique everyday bags and backpacks for customers in Kampala and use the profits to fund the SeatPacks for rural school children. Because he was a really good designer, he was able to develop unique products and got many customers in Uganda and he is now even shipping to Europe and the US. His company is growing and he is employing 6 people in Kampala.
Up to today, Zetu Africa has distributed over 2,000 SeatPacks in Uganda and aims to reach 10,000 SeatPacks very soon.
