General

First Makerere Workshop on Social Systems & Computation

Published

16 years ago

November 29, 2010

Summary Top researchers from Northwestern University (Chicago), University of British Columbia (Vancouver) and Makerere (Kampala) are teaming up to offer a workshop on cutting-edge methods for computational modeling of social systems, algorithm design, and machine learning. The sessions will take place between December 3rd and 10th, and there is no cost for attendance; however, registration is mandatory.

Summary Top researchers from Northwestern University (Chicago), University of British Columbia (Vancouver) and Makerere (Kampala) are teaming up to offer a workshop on cutting-edge methods for computational modeling of social systems, algorithm design, and machine learning. The sessions will take place between December 3rd and 10th, and there is no cost for attendance; however, registration is mandatory.

Attendance is limited to academic staff working at a Ugandan university; students doing research in related areas may also be given special permission to attend if space permits. Participants will have the opportunity to publish papers in official, reviewed workshop proceedings at a later date. A certificate of completion will be provided to participants who attend at least two thirds of workshop sessions.

Overview Traditionally, computer science has viewed data as coming from either an adversarial source or from nature itself, giving rise to worst-case and average-case design and analysis of optimization algorithms. In recent years with the advent of modern technologies like the Internet, it has become increasingly apparent that neither of these assumptions reflects reality. Data is neither adversarial nor average, but rather inputs to algorithms are constructed by a diverse set of self-interested agents in an economy, all aiming to maximize their own happiness. Thus the raw data is often not available to an algorithm designer, but must be solicited from the agents–that is, the designer faces an economic constraint. The primary goal of this workshop is to explore the implications of this observation. We will study the performance of algorithms in the presence of utility-maximizing agents and ask whether alternate designs might create incentives for agents to act more optimally. Simultaneously, we will look at other more traditional optimization problems such as approximation and learning and techniques to solve them, pointing out that these may often be leveraged to solve issues in the economic setting.

Related Research Areas Computer Science Theory; Artificial Intelligence; Economics; Business

Format The workshop will consist of six 3-hour lectures, plus meal/breakout sessions for informal research discussion. Spaces are strictly limited, and attendees must pre-register. We will aim to select topics and session times that are best for our participants. To register, and to indicate your preferences for topics and dates, please complete the survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WWGMKZG.

List of Candidate Topics The workshop will consist of up to six of the following twelve topics.

Introduction to Game Theory
Game theory is the mathematical study of interaction among independent, self-interested agents. It has been applied to disciplines as diverse as economics, political science, biology, psychology, linguistics—and computer science. This tutorial will introduce what has become the dominant branch of game theory, called noncooperative game theory, and will specifically describe normal-form games, a canonical representation in this discipline. The tutorial will be motivated by the question: "In a strategic interaction, what joint outcomes make sense?"

Voting Theory
Voting (or "Social Choice") theory adopts a“designer perspective” to multiagent systems, asking what rules should be put in place by the authority (the “designer”) orchestrating a set of agents. Specifically, how should a central authority pool the preferences of different agents so as to best reflect the wishes of the population as a whole? (Contrast this with Game Theory, whichadopts what might be called the “agent perspective”: its focus is on making statements about how agents should or would act in a given situation.) This tutorial will describe famous voting rules, show problems with them, and explain Arrow's famous impossibility result.

Mechanism Design and Auctions
Social choice theory is nonstrategic: it takes the preferences of agents as given, and investigates ways in which they can be aggregated. But of course those preferences are usually not known. Instead, agents must be asked to declare them, which they may do dishonestly. Since as a designer you wish to find an optimal outcome with respect to the agents’ true preferences (e.g., electing a leader that truly reflects the agents’ preferences), optimizing with respect to the declared preferences will not in general achieve the objective. This tutorial will introduce Mechanism Design, the study of identifying socially desirable protocols for making decisions in such settings. It will describe the core principles behind this theory, and explain the famous "Vickrey-Clarke-Groves" mechanism, an ingenious technique for selecting globally-utility-maximizing outcomes even among selfish agents. It will also describe Auction Theory, the most famous application of mechanism design. Auctions are mechanisms that decide who should receive a scarce resource, and that impose payments upon some or all participants, based on agents' "bids".

Constraint Satisfaction Problem Solving
This hands-on tutorial will teach participants about solving Constraint Satisfaction Problems using search and constraint propagation techniques. This is a representation language from artificial intelligence, used to describe problems in scheduling, circuit verification, DNA structure prediction, vehicle routing, and many other practical problems. The tutorial will consider the problem of solving Sudoku puzzles as a running example. By the end of the session, participants will have written software (in Python) capable of solving any Sudoku puzzle in less than a second.

Bayesian methods and Probabilisitic Inference
Bayesian methods are commonly used for recognising patterns and making predictions in the fields of medicine, economics, finance and engineering, powering all manner of applications from fingerprint recognition to spam filters to robotic self-driving cars. This session will show how principles of probability can be used when making inferences from large datasets, covering issues such as prior knowledge and hyperpriors, the construction of "belief networks", and nonparametric methods such as Gaussian processes. Several applications will be demonstrated.

Computer Vision

It is useful to be able to automatically answer questions about an image, such as "is this the face of person X?", "how many cars are there on this street?" or "is there anything unusual about this x-ray?". This session will look at some of the current state of the art in computer vision techniques, including methods for representing the information in an image (feature extraction), and to recognise objects in an image given such a representation. We will particularly spend some time looking at approaches which have been found to work well empirically on object recognition, such as generalised Hough transforms, boosted cascades of Haar wavelet classifiers, and visual bag-of-words methods. Locally relevant applications in crop disease diagnosis, parasite detection in blood samples and traffic monitoring will be demonstrated as illustrating examples.

Learning Causal Structure from Data
Until a few decades ago, it was thought to be impossible to learn causes and effects from purely observational data without doing experiments. Sometimes, however, it is impossible to do experiments (e.g. in some branches of genetics), or experiments may be costly or unethical (e.g. situations in climate change or medicine), so the emergence of computational methods for distinguishing causes, effects and confounding variables is likely to have wide implications. Some principles are now understood for learning the causal structure between different variables, and this session will explain the most successful current approaches, their possibilities and their limitations.

Internet Search and Monetization
The internet is one of the most fundamental and important applications of computer science. Central to its existence are search engines which enable us to find content on the web. This module focuses on the algorithms like PageRank that these search engines use to help us find webpages. It also studies how these engines make money through advertising.

Social Networks
Social networks describe the structure of interpersonal relationships and have many alarmingly predictable properties. While most people have just a few friends, most social networks have at least a few very popular people. Furthermore, most people are closely linked to every other person so that a message (or an idea or a disease) can spread rapidly throughout the network. Finally, social networks tend to be fairly clustered — i.e., if two people share a common friend it is quite likely that they are also friends. This module will discuss the typical structures of social networks, models that explain these structures, and the impact of these structures on activities in the social network such as message routing or the adoption of new technologies.

Two-Sided Matching Markets
Many markets involve two “sides'' that wish to be matched to one another. For example, a marriage market matches women to men; a job market matches workers to employers. In such settings, people on each side have strict preferences over the options on the other side of the market. Hence, a woman Julie may like David best, John second best, and Christopher third. David on the other hand may prefer Mary to Julie. In such settings, what matches might we expect to form? Can these matches be computed by a centralized algorithm, a match-maker for example, and what are the corresponding incentives of the participants? These questions are of fundamental importance as such centralized algorithms are in use in many important markets. In many countries, medical students are matched to hospitals using such algorithms, or school children to schools.

Approximation Algorithms
In the field of algorithms, many tasks turn out to be computationally difficult. That is, the time to complete the task is fundamentally large compared to the size of the problem. For example, consider the problem of finding the optimal way to visit 10 cities, visiting each exactly once. To minimize travel time, one could test all possible travel schedules, but for 10 cities there are already 3.5M of them! Unfortunately, there is not a significantly quicker way to find the optimal solution. However, one can find an approximately optimal solution quickly. That is, with just a few things to check, one can design a schedule that takes at most 50% more time than the optimal one. In this module we showcase a few general techniques for computing approximate solutions to hard problems, including the use of randomization and linear programming.

Graph Theory
A graph is a combinatorial object consisting of nodes and edges, and is a extremely valuable abstraction of many practical problems. For example, nodes might represent jobs and edges might connect pairs of jobs that can not be performed simultaneously. Alternatively, nodes might represent electronic components on a circuit board and edges the wiring that connects them. Many questions that arise in such domains can be cast as an optimization question in the corresponding graph. The number of workers required to complete all jobs in fixed time frame in the first example is at its heart a graph coloring problem. Asking whether one can lay out the circuit board so no two wires cross becomes the problem of determining which graphs have planar representations. This course defines graphs, shows how to solve a few fundamental graph problems, and applies them to practical settings.

Speaker Bios

Nicole Immorlica is an assistant professor in the Economics Group of Northwestern University's EECS department in Chicago, IL, USA. She joined Northwestern in Fall 2008 after postdoctoral positions at Microsoft Research in Seattle, Washington, USA and Centruum voor Wiskunde en Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She received her Ph.D. from MIT in Boston, MA, USA, in 2005 under the joint supervision of Erik Demaine and David Karger. Her main research area is algorithmic game theory where she investigates economic and social implications of modern technologies including social networks, advertising auctions, and online auction design.

Kevin Leyton-Brown is an associate professor in computer science at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He received a B.Sc. from McMaster University (1998), and an M.Sc. and PhD from Stanford University (2001; 2003). Much of his work is at the intersection of computer science and microeconomics, addressing computational problems in economic contexts and incentive issues in multiagent systems. He also studies the application of machine learning to the automated design and analysis of algorithms for solving hard computational problems.

John Quinn is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at Makerere University. He received a BA in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge (2000) and a PhD from the University of Edinburgh (2007). He coordinates the Machine Learning Group at Makerere, and his research interests are in pattern recognition and computer vision particularly applied to developing world problems.

General

Makerere University Launches First Writing Summer School

Published

2 hours ago

July 6, 2026

Philemon Akoragye

Makerere University on Monday 6^th July officially launched the First Mak Writing Summer School, a week long training program designed to equip students and staff with the practical writing skills needed to compete in today’s job market. The official unveiling took place at the Makerere Main Building and was streamed online to accommodate the more than two hundred participants who registered, running from 1:30 PM to 2:00 PM before the first working session began.

The program is a joint initiative of the Makerere University Writing Centre and the Makerere University Press, known as MakPress. It was officially unveiled by Professor Sarah Ssali, the First Deputy Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs.The occasion drew support from Professor Fredrick Muyodi, Head of the Makerere University Writing Centre, and Associate Professor William Tayeebwa, Director of MakPress, both of whom addressed participants.

Speaking first, Professor Tayeebwa outlined the mandate of MakPress, describing it as an office that reports to the Deputy Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and that carries out three main functions: publishing books, publishing academic journals, and now, an expanding portfolio that includes working paper series. He noted that the traditional strength of the press has been the publication of books, and he used the occasion to showcase two recent examples authored by members of the university community.

The first was a book titled The Muchwezi, The Flower, The Suitor, written by Charles Ziwa, a staff member attached to the Writing Centre who has been coordinating the current writing camp. More so, the second was a book titled The Men I Killed, authored by a student in the Department of Journalism and Communication. Both works are currently self published, and Professor Tayeebwa used them to illustrate the kind of support MakPress hopes to extend to more writers across the university, encouraging students, staff, and even members of the public with completed manuscripts, including family histories or biographies, to bring their projects to the press for formal publishing support rather than remaining self published.

He also spoke about the press journal portfolio, which includes a Mak journal run by the School of Languages, Literature and Communication, the Working Paper Series by the College of Business and Management Sciences, and the Mawazo journal, which is shared with the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. He reported that the writing camp had already drawn about 175 participants at the time he spoke, a number he described with evident pride.

“Before any work can reach the publishing stage described by Professor Tayeebwa, it must first pass through the discipline of good writing, which is the core mission of the Writing Centre”, Professor Muyodi exclusively emphasized the arc that the summer school is taking. Established only last year, the Centre exists to strengthen the writing skills of Makerere University staff and students, with plans to extend its services to communities beyond the university and eventually across the East African region, a concept he described as still new in this part of the world.

He listed the Centres and areas of coverage as including the writing of manuscripts, grant proposals, scholarly and academic writing, curriculum vitae, application letters, and the responsible use of artificial intelligence in writing. He identified the Centres target beneficiaries as early career researchers, postgraduate students, undergraduate finalists preparing to enter the job market, and non academic staff, including registrars, who also require strong writing skills in their daily work.

In her remarks as Chief Guest, Professor Ssali described the summer school as an important bridge that transforms theoretical classroom knowledge into marketable, real world, competence based skills.

She praised the facilitators lined up for the week as experienced professionals and life coaches rather than simple motivational speakers, and expressed confidence that they would equip participants with practical, usable skills. She committed her office to working with both the Writing Centre and MakPress to institutionalize the training so that Makerere University graduates leave with more than just academic degrees, but also with the practical soft skills required to lead and transform the Ugandan workforce. Prof. Ssali conclusively declared the First Makerere University Writing Summer School officially launched, expressing hope that future editions would attract even greater resources and reach a wider audience.

Following the opening ceremony, the floor was handed to Mr Abdul Noor Luttamaguzi, who facilitated the first working session on professional CV writing. Introducing himself, he described his roles as the recently elected global student director of the World Aquaculture Society, a PhD student in the Department of Zoology, Entomology and Fisheries Sciences within the School of Biosciences at Makerere University, a Senior Fisheries Officer with Luweero District Local Government, and the founder and director of the ANL Foundation, an organization that supports youth employment and capacity building.

Turning to the Ugandan context, Mr Luttamaguzi noted that recruiters and human resource professionals often use the terms CV and resume interchangeably, with the real distinguishing factor being length and purpose rather than strict definition.

The opening day module, covering the launch ceremony and the first session on professional CV writing, set the tone for a full week of training with subsequent sessions expected to cover application letter writing and the use of artificial intelligence in professional writing. Organizers described the summer school as the first in what is planned to be a continuing series of writing camps, with future editions expected to expand from professional skills training into writing for scholarly publication.

General

Undergraduate Admission Lists 2026/2027

Published

3 days ago

July 3, 2026

Mak Editor

Students in discussion groups at Freedom Square.

The Office of Academic Registrar, Makerere University has released admission lists of candidates admitted under the Talented Sports Men & Women, Disability and District Quota Schemes with Government sponsorship 2026/27 Academic Year including appeals and remarked cases.

Other admission lists released include A-Level Applicants with Ugandan and those with Foreign Qualifications, Diploma in Performing Arts, Mature-Age Entry and Bachelor of Education (EXTERNAL Batch 2) for the Academic Year 2026/2027 under self sponsorship.

The cut-off points points can be accessed by following the link: https://mak.ac.ug/study-mak/cut-points

Kindly follow the links below to access the lists:-

Government Sponsorship
Private\Self Sponsorship

Update 3rd July 2026

International & East African Applicants

Mop-up Lists

Government Sponsorship – Mature Age Entry Scheme

General

Makerere Launches Strategic Plan 2030, Aligns with Uganda’s Tenfold Growth Agenda

Published

4 days ago

July 2, 2026

Betty Kyakuwa

Official launch of the Makerere University Strategic Plan 2025-2030 by the Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Hon. Henry Musasizi, marking a major milestone in its commitment to strengthening research, innovation, and human capital development in line with Uganda’s national development priorities, 2nd July 2026, Main Hall, Kampala Uganda, East Africa.

Makerere University has officially launched its Strategic Plan 2025-2030, marking a major milestone in its commitment to strengthening research, innovation, and human capital development in line with Uganda’s national development priorities.

The launch brought together senior government officials, university leadership, and development planners, including the Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Hon. Henry Musasizi, and a representative from the National Planning Authority (NPA), alongside the University Vice Chancellor.

Hon. Henry Musasizi unveils the Makerere University Strategic Plan (2025-2030). Official launch of the Makerere University Strategic Plan 2025-2030 by the Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Hon. Henry Musasizi, marking a major milestone in its commitment to strengthening research, innovation, and human capital development in line with Uganda’s national development priorities, 2nd July 2026, Main Hall, Kampala Uganda, East Africa. — ***Hon. Henry Musasizi unveils the Makerere University Strategic Plan (2025-2030).***

A Vision Anchored in National Transformation

Speaking at the launch, the Vice Chancellor underscored the University’s ambition to significantly expand graduate training and strengthen its contribution to national development. He noted that the institution is targeting a return to pre-COVID enrolment levels and a substantial increase in postgraduate numbers by 2030, with a focus on producing highly skilled graduates, innovators, and researchers.

He emphasized that the Strategic Plan positions the University as a key driver of Uganda’s transformation through knowledge generation, innovation, and entrepreneurship, aligned with national priorities.

“The staffing distribution is shown here. Under the approved establishment, we intended to have 419 Professors, but we currently have only 75. We planned for 473 Associate Professors, but currently have only 144. This clearly demonstrates that we still have considerable room for growth in strengthening our academic staff profile,” the VC said.

Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe. Official launch of the Makerere University Strategic Plan 2025-2030 by the Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Hon. Henry Musasizi, marking a major milestone in its commitment to strengthening research, innovation, and human capital development in line with Uganda’s national development priorities, 2nd July 2026, Main Hall, Kampala Uganda, East Africa. — ***Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe.***

The VC appreciated researchers and research centres, that continue to attract substantial research funding. He highlighted the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) and the Makerere University Walter Reed Project which attracted approximately US$70 million in international research funding into Uganda.

“When you combine the grants won by all our researchers through competitive international funding, the total exceeds US$200 million,” he said.

In her remarks, the Chairperson of the University Council, Dr. Lorna Magara, described the Strategic Plan as more than an institutional roadmap, calling it “a public covenant with the people of Uganda.”

She noted that the Plan marks “the launch of Makerere University’s next chapter,” adding that decisions taken over the next five years will shape not only the future of the institution, but also Uganda’s development trajectory through graduates, research, innovations, and leadership.

Dr. Lorna Magara. Official launch of the Makerere University Strategic Plan 2025-2030 by the Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Hon. Henry Musasizi, marking a major milestone in its commitment to strengthening research, innovation, and human capital development in line with Uganda’s national development priorities, 2nd July 2026, Main Hall, Kampala Uganda, East Africa. — ***Dr. Lorna Magara.***

Dr. Magara emphasized Makerere’s unique national role as Uganda’s premier public university, entrusted with public resources and public confidence.

“Every investment made in Makerere must produce measurable value for the people of Uganda,” she said, underscoring the need for accountability, integrity, and impact.

Ambitious Targets for Transformation

The Council Chairperson and the Vice chancellor outlined bold performance targets under the Strategic Plan, including doubling postgraduate enrolment, increasing STEM enrolment from 30% to 55%, improving PhD completion rates from 10% to 35%, and more than doubling peer-reviewed research output, alongside a significant rise in patents and innovations.

Dr. Magara stressed that these targets are not aspirations alone but binding commitments against which institutional performance will be measured.

Hon. Henry Musasizi (3rd R) and Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe (2rd L) display an autographed dummy of the signed Strategic Plan as L-R: Hon. Kadondi Gracious, Prof. Henry Alinaitwe, Rt. Hon. Daniel Kidega, Dr. Lorna Magara, H.E. Mubiru John Bosco and Prof. Sarah Ssali witness. Official launch of the Makerere University Strategic Plan 2025-2030 by the Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Hon. Henry Musasizi, marking a major milestone in its commitment to strengthening research, innovation, and human capital development in line with Uganda’s national development priorities, 2nd July 2026, Main Hall, Kampala Uganda, East Africa. — Hon. Henry Musasizi (3rd R) and Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe (2rd L) display an autographed dummy of the signed Strategic Plan as L-R: Hon. Kadondi Gracious, Prof. Henry Alinaitwe, Rt. Hon. Daniel Kidega, Dr. Lorna Magara, H.E. Mubiru John Bosco and Prof. Sarah Ssali witness.

“Ambition is precisely what this moment demands. A strategic plan is not measured by the elegance of its language, but by the lives it transforms,” she said.

Call for Stronger Governance and Legal Reform

Dr. Magara also highlighted the need for reform of the Universities and Other Tertiary Institutions Act, Cap. 262, noting that the current legal framework has not kept pace with the evolving realities of university governance and innovation.

She called on Government and Parliament to support a timely review of the Act to enable universities to better optimise knowledge systems, productive assets, and innovation capacity in support of national development.

Government Endorsement and Strategic Alignment

Hon. Henry Musasizi commended the University for developing a forward-looking Strategic Plan aligned with Uganda’s Vision 2040 and the Fourth National Development Plan (NDP IV), which serves as the foundation for the country’s Tenfold Growth Strategy.

He explained that Uganda’s ambition to grow its economy from about USD 50 billion to USD 500 billion requires accelerated growth driven by productivity gains, innovation, and strong human capital development.

Hon. Henry Musasizi. Official launch of the Makerere University Strategic Plan 2025-2030 by the Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Hon. Henry Musasizi, marking a major milestone in its commitment to strengthening research, innovation, and human capital development in line with Uganda’s national development priorities, 2nd July 2026, Main Hall, Kampala Uganda, East Africa. — ***Hon. Henry Musasizi.***

“Universities are central actors in national transformation. They are engines of knowledge creation, innovation, and human capital development,” he said.

The Minister stressed that government priorities include strengthening research, promoting industrialization, and ensuring that knowledge generated in universities is translated into practical solutions that support economic growth. He further highlighted the importance of accountability, efficiency, and value for money in public investments in higher education.

Universities as Drivers of the Tenfold Growth Strategy

In his presentation, the Senior Planner at the National Planning Authority, Samuel Kasule, emphasized that the Strategic Plan is firmly anchored in Uganda’s comprehensive development framework under Vision 2040 and NDP IV.

He noted that the Tenfold Growth Strategy seeks to accelerate Uganda’s economic growth into double-digit territory, enabling the country to achieve structural transformation and reach upper middle-income status.

Mr. Samuel Kasule. Official launch of the Makerere University Strategic Plan 2025-2030 by the Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Hon. Henry Musasizi, marking a major milestone in its commitment to strengthening research, innovation, and human capital development in line with Uganda’s national development priorities, 2nd July 2026, Main Hall, Kampala Uganda, East Africa. — ***Mr. Samuel Kasule.***

Kasule underscored that universities play a critical role in this transformation through labour productivity, research, and innovation. He pointed out that priority sectors such as agriculture, tourism, minerals, oil and gas, and ICT depend heavily on skilled graduates and strong research ecosystems.

He also highlighted the importance of competency-based education, alignment of academic programmes with national human resource needs, and strengthening postgraduate training and research outputs.

A Shared Commitment to Transformation

Across all speeches, a strong message emerged: universities are central to Uganda’s development agenda and must evolve into research-intensive institutions that directly contribute to economic transformation.

The Strategic Plan 2025-2030 was widely commended for its focus on innovation, industry collaboration, digital transformation, and the commercialization of research outputs.

Government leaders reaffirmed continued support for higher education institutions through research funding, innovation ecosystems, and strengthened university–industry partnerships.

Conclusion

The launch of the Strategic Plan 2030 signals a renewed commitment to positioning the University as a key partner in Uganda’s development journey. With strong alignment to national priorities, the Plan is expected to accelerate research, innovation, and skills development necessary for achieving Uganda’s long-term economic ambitions. The Strategic Plan may be accessed at: https://mak.ac.ug/about/strategic-plan