BuildHerThon’s first flagship project begins in Eastern Uganda, where the challenge is not only infrastructure need, but the absence of the evidence, planning and coordination required to unlock delivery.

In Eastern Uganda, the need for infrastructure is not abstract.

Across communities, access to safe water, sanitation, reliable energy and other essential services remains uneven. The issue is not simply that funding does not exist. In many cases, it does. The harder problem is that local systems often lack the planning capacity, technical evidence and investment-ready models needed to turn need into action.

This is where Nexus+ begins.

As BuildHerThon’s first flagship project, Nexus+ is designed to connect community priorities, technical planning and long-term investment in one structured model. It is being delivered with Engineers Without Borders East Africa, supported by Trimble technology and expertise, and shaped to work at the scale required for stronger infrastructure planning over time.

The pilot focuses on four parishes across the districts of Iganga and Kumi, covering more than 20 villages and reaching over 12,500 people. It is structured as an 18-month programme, moving from baseline evidence and infrastructure mapping through to parish-level masterplans, financial modelling and investment-ready project portfolios.

That sequence matters.

Too often, infrastructure work begins too late in the chain, when the problem has already been narrowed and the funding conversation has outrun the evidence. Nexus+ starts earlier. It begins with context: how services are functioning, where they are failing, what communities experience in daily life and what district systems need in order to plan credibly.

The project is designed in phases.

The first phase focuses on mobilisation and assessment: community engagement, baseline surveys, infrastructure mapping, GIS data capture and the training of local youth enumerators.

The second phase moves into co-design and technical planning, with feasibility work, parish masterplans and validation through local stakeholders.

The third phase prepares the route to delivery through financial modelling, investment portfolios and materials that can support funding pathways. The programme documents set out four investment-ready parish masterplans, four bankable portfolios and 12 to 20 prioritised capital projects packaged for financing.

Nexus+ is not proof because it is visible. It is proof because it is structured.

This is where Trimble’s role becomes tangible.

Trimble is helping enable the evidence base the project depends on through geospatial tools, data capture, mapping and technical support. GIS and drone-enabled surveying are being used to gather and organise the kind of spatial and infrastructure data that planning systems need but often do not have. That data then becomes usable: for analysis, for engineering decisions, for district planning conversations and for investment preparation.

In other words, the technology is not the story. What it makes possible is.

It helps turn local knowledge into structured evidence. It helps make infrastructure need legible at parish scale. It helps communities, planners and technical teams work from a stronger shared picture of what exists, what is missing and what could be delivered more effectively.

Four parishes. 
20+ villages. 
12,500+ people. 
One structured route from evidence to investment. 

Nexus+ is also designed to leave more behind than a set of plans.

Local universities are part of the programme, creating hands-on opportunities for students to take part in applied engineering and planning work. Youth enumerators are being trained through the mapping and data collection process. 

District and parish actors are part of the model, not external to it. The intention is not only to prepare projects for investment, but to strengthen the local capability needed to sustain infrastructure over time. The source material also frames this as a model that builds future talent alongside delivery, rather than after it.

That is what makes Nexus+ important to BuildHerThon.

It is not proof because it is visible. It is proof because it is structured. Because it connects leadership, real work and future talent in the same place. Because it shows how women’s leadership can sit within live infrastructure delivery rather than alongside it. And because it makes clear that BuildHerThon is already in motion through work that is practical, credible and grounded in reality.

Nexus+ is the first expression of the platform.

It shows that BuildHerThon is not built around statements of intent. It is being built through delivery.