Since the year 2000, Sweden has provided research support to public Universities in Uganda including Makerere University. The support has included both institutional support and the funding of staff to undertake their Masters, PhD and post-doctoral studies in collaboration with Swedish Universities. We met up with Engineer Bainomugisha and Prof. Tonny Oyana from the College of Computing and Information Science at Makerere University, to talk about how the college has benefitted from the institutional support provided by Sweden.
The Principal of the College of Computing and Information Science, Prof. Tonny Oyana, shared the following with us.
When building the capacity of institutions, it is important to focus both on the personnel and the facilities. At our college, the facilities include both the hardware and software systems used at the College. Sweden’s support helped us with institutional capacity, learning and research carried out by our staff, where I served as the Principal Investigator for this support.
Makerere University has one of the top ICT facilities in Uganda. We have a fully wired and wireless network capacity at the University which has been enhanced through the support from Sweden. The support has gone to both infrastructure and the training of staff at Makerere University and the other public Universities in Uganda, with a total of over 378 staff trained in Information Technology from Gulu University, Makerere University, Busitema University, Mbarara University and Kyambogo University. We first trained the staff at Makerere, who then transferred their knowledge to the other Universities.
Through this support, we have gained a lot of knowledge from Swedish Universities, with the skills acquired being used in Uganda. A high-performance computing facility was established, that helped the continuation of learning during the Covid19 pandemic over the last 2 years. The support has also granted us access to other Sida funded projects and the wider global research community.
We are fortunate that Sida believed in supporting public universities, which has helped our institution respond to 21st century challenges.
Regarding the technical support we have received from Swedish Universities, 38 of our students have received cyber security trainings from Stockholm University. Out of the 38, only 2 are women who have specialized in Information Security (Ms. Rose Adee) and Artificial Intelligence (Ms. Samiiha Nalwoga). Ms. Nalwoga has gone on to undergo further practical training and has received funding for further research in Germany and Ms. Adee is currently in the UK. So far, 14 students have completed their masters’ programs with some being employed in Makerere University under Eng. Bainomugisha’s department/program.
We hope to continue deepening the relationship between Makerere University and Swedish Universities going forward, between individuals and faculties.
Engineer Bainomugisha, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Makerere University, shared how Sweden’s support has built the capacity of the staff under the BRIGHT research project (Building Research Capacity in Innovative ICT for Development).
Our research project had a total of 9 PhD students, with 6 of them already completed their PhD and 1 expected to defend mid this year and 2 completed their Licentiate. 3 of these students are women, and they have all completed their studies, which is good. 3 of the students managed to complete their doctoral programs within 4 years as well with one slightly longer than that. Several staff members who have completed their trainings are now working at the college supporting research, teaching and graduate programs. Three staff have been promoted to the rank of Lecturer.
We developed the idea to build an air quality monitoring system through our research. We acquired our first 3D printer in 2018 that we could use to build customized housing for the hardware components. This enabled us to iterate and build a robust air quality monitor and has served as a foundation for the AirQo research innovation. Over the years the AirQo innovation has raised over USD 5 million to scale up the project in Uganda and recently to other African countries. Through this project, we realized that university could service the needs of society, industry and that there was also a strong demand from the government as well.
The AirQo project has started new partnerships with local and global organisations including Google. Most recently I have been honored to be recognized as one of the future global leaders to watch (https://www.google.org/leaders-to-watch/). This has brought good visibility for the department, the college and Makerere University as a whole.
Both Dr. Grace Kamulegeya and Dr. Allan Kazibwe were enrolled at Makerere University and completed their program within four years and are actively contributing to their departments. Dr. Rashida Namisanvu who was based at both Gothenburg University and Chalmers University, also completed under this program is now a graduate coordinator.
We have undertaken weekly seminars for Masters students. Another former PhD student Dr. Michael Kizito leads seminar series. Dr. Kizito is also a beneficiary of the support from Sweden. He has helped several graduates present their work. Dr. Kizito has also recently won a research grant through a collaboration Michigan State University, USA. The research is a continuation of his PhD research and aims to use Health Information Technology Governance and Epidemiologic Approaches to Implement Sustainable Digital Health Systems in Central Uganda".
Thanks to the Sida-Makerere programme, Chalmers University in Sweden has partnered with Makerere University to contribute to establishment of a community of software engineering research, which has helped link researchers on the continent with global researchers. Through the Bright project we started the African Conference on Software Engineering. It has provided a platform that brings together academia, industry and the corporate world in order to exchange knowledge. For 2022, the African Conference on Software Engineering (ACSE) and the Africa and Middle East Conference on Software Engineering (AMECSE) have joined forces and grew into the Federated Africa and Middle East Conference on Software Engineering (FAMECSE). http://federated.amecse-conferences.org/
I visited the software center at Chalmers University while I was in Sweden. I got to learn that the center was formulated by the university to help service the needs of industries. Inspired by this concept and with Swedish support, we started a similar center here at Makerere University.
Soon after this, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding with KCCA and then started building up the network of air quality monitoring systems. This was part of KCCAs air quality action plan. We also signed another MoU with the National Environmental Management Authority to contribute to the development Uganda air quality standards. Our ambition is to scale up to other African cities and we have been approached by UNEP to do studies with them. We hope to grow from being a university-based project to being international.
The AirQo lab has provided opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students being trained in artificial intelligence with a practical case study of how their knowledge can be implemented. Our knowledge has been embedded in teaching at the college. The lab has accommodated 2 students from Mbarara University as well, Adones Rukundo and David Bamutura.
Chalmers University in Sweden has been keen to extend collaboration with African research and have worked with Makerere University, Mbarara University and Nairobi University as well. We have received funding from a Swedish research fund and hope to build a network from this research. This would never have been possible without the research support from Sweden.
The Computer Science department at Makerere University still collaborates with the Department of Earth Observation in Chalmers University. The collaboration is easy since the staff at Makerere University are known in Chalmers. We encourage students to take advantage of this and use the networks that we have in Sweden.
There has been a curriculum review undertaken in the Masters in Computer Science program in Makerere, that has been supported by Sweden. This support has also helped us to engage with other Universities in the global south. Recently, a conference was hosted by the Jomo Kenyatta Institute of Science and Technology and Makerere University has in turn hosted Masters students from there.
We are also part of AI for Health networks supported by IDRC and Sida on Covid19 and maternal health in collaboration the Infectious Disease Institute and other partners.
In summary, Uganda has been a success story for bilateral research cooperation with Sweden. The investment has not only helped build the research capacity of Ugandan Universities, but many universities in the region have also benefited from the knowledge transfer. We are grateful for the support.
Compiled by Andrew Byaruhanga, Communications Officer, Embassy of Sweden in Kampala
