Beyond the technology and value addition work at the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES), the Minister’s first day at Makerere University carried him to two additional stops. Each offered a different picture of how deep the University’s research base runs, before day two shifted the conversation from laboratories to a national action plan built jointly with the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.

Appreciating the Foundation of Applied and other Sciences

At the College of Natural Sciences, the Minister was taken through a set of platforms that rarely attract public attention but underpin much of the University’s scientific output. Chief among them was the site and development plan for a proposed Nuclear Magnetic Resonance facility, a piece of equipment that, once built, would give Makerere researchers and students the ability to analyse molecular structures in ways currently only possible by sending samples abroad. Facility leads explained what such a facility would mean for chemistry, pharmaceutical research and materials science on campus, and the Minister engaged closely on what it would take, in funding and partnership terms, to move the project from plan to construction.

The College also presented selected materials, chemistry and biotechnology platforms already in active use, work that quietly feeds into much of the applied research showcased earlier in the day at CEDAT and CAES. Alongside this, researchers walked the Minister through ongoing work in space science, earth observation and geospatial technologies, fields that Makerere has been building up steadily and that carry obvious relevance for agriculture, environmental monitoring, disaster response and urban planning nationally. It was, in many ways, the most understated stop of the day, but also one of the clearest reminders that the flashier innovations seen elsewhere on campus rest on a foundation of basic scientific capability that the College of Natural Sciences exists to nurture.

The Innovation and Commercialisation Ecosystem

The day’s programme reached its final stop at UniPod and the Makerere University Technology Innovation Centre, and for many in the delegation, this was where the argument the University had been building all day came together most clearly. Student innovators, research teams and incubated start ups had prepared demonstrations that walked the Minister through the full pipeline his hosts had been describing since morning, from digital fabrication and makerspace tools that let a student turn a sketch into a working part, through to businesses that had already found their first paying customers.

The Minister was shown concrete evidence of innovations that had made the journey from prototype to certification, from certification to investment, and in a handful of cases, from investment to production and market entry. He spent time speaking directly with several young innovators, asking not the polite questions of a formal tour but the practical ones an investor might ask, about the origins of their ideas, the setbacks they had run into moving from a working model to something reliable enough to sell, and what exactly stood between where they were and where they wanted to be. Several of the students described spending months, sometimes years, refining a single component or feature before it was ready to show anyone outside their research group, work that rarely appears in the polished demonstrations visitors eventually see but that accounts for most of the actual effort behind them.

Discussion at this final stop centred on intellectual property protection, licensing arrangements, incubation support, venture financing and industry linkage, the unglamorous scaffolding that determines whether a good idea becomes a company or simply stays a good idea. University officials noted that UniPod’s role has increasingly become less about the physical fabrication tools it houses, though those remain heavily used, and more about walking student innovators through exactly this scaffolding, connecting them to legal support for patent filings, to potential investors, and to industry partners willing to pilot an unproven technology. It was a fitting note to close on, tying together the strategic remarks made that morning about commercialisation with the tangible, sometimes unfinished work of the students trying to achieve it.

Day One Ends on a High

With the day’s tours complete, University leadership and the Science, Technology and Innovation Office in the Office of the President used the closing hour to take stock, confirming which issues raised across the day, funding gaps, equipment needs, regulatory bottlenecks and partnership opportunities among them, would be carried forward for deeper attention on day two.

Feeling the Pulse of Health Sciences

Day two of the visit on 22^nd July 2026 turned the delegation’s attention from engineering workshops and computing laboratories to the University’s health and life sciences base, a cluster of research capacity that Makerere has built up over decades and that carries some of the clearest examples of research shaping national policy and practice. At the College of Health Sciences, the Minister was taken through the Makerere University Biomedical Research Centre, along with genomics, molecular and immunology laboratories whose biobanks and associated bioinformatics capacity now support research well beyond the College’s own walls. Researchers presented work on medical devices, diagnostics and biomarkers moving through clinical research and translation pathways, and the conversation turned, as it had the day before at CEDAT, to the practicalities of getting this work certified, accredited and eventually linked to local manufacturing rather than leaving finished designs to be produced elsewhere.

Influencing Public Health Outcomes beyond Academia

At the Makerere University School of Public Health, the focus shifted from laboratory bench work to population level research, surveillance systems and the health data platforms the School has built to support implementation research and policy translation. The Minister was walked through examples of School research that had gone on to shape national health programmes or been scaled into solutions used well beyond the University, a reminder that not all of Makerere‘s most consequential work happens inside a laboratory. Much of this research, staff noted, had been carried out with heavy involvement from graduate students working on theses tied directly to live public health problems.

Scaling-up Impact through Global Partnerships

The Infectious Diseases Institute offered a further layer to the health sciences picture, with its flagship laboratories, diagnostics platforms and biotechnology capacity, alongside compute and artificial intelligence infrastructure supporting clinical and infectious disease research. The Institute’s global research partnerships came up repeatedly in discussion, framed less as prestige collaborations and more as pathways through which locally developed technology could reach international markets and support, in turn, further enterprise creation at home. It was a fitting point at which to close out the health sciences segment of the visit, the Institute’s work drawing together the biomedical research, public health data and diagnostic capacity the Minister had been shown across the cluster, and pointing, as much of the previous day had, toward the same underlying question of how to move strong research further and faster toward practical, sellable outcomes.

Unpacking an Eventful Two Days

The second day’s centrepiece, however, was not another laboratory tour but a strategic dialogue on translating research into products, enterprises and national impact, a session that brought researchers and innovators face to face with the barriers that keep good science from becoming a good business. Presenters spoke candidly about the practical obstacles to technology translation and scale, touching on intellectual property protection, regulation, certification, procurement processes, industry partnerships, venture financing and the basic commercial management skills that many research teams simply do not have. The session deliberately widened beyond the science and technology colleges themselves, drawing in defined contributions from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the School of Law, the College of Business and Management Sciences, and the College of Education and External Studies, each speaking to a piece of the puzzle that pure science cannot solve alone, innovation culture, technology law, business development, communication, STEM human capital and the harder question of how new technologies actually get adopted by ordinary people and institutions.

That dialogue fed directly into a curated session of innovation and enterprise pitches, in which a select group of the University’s most promising technologies, spin off companies and student enterprises were given a short, structured window to make their case. Each pitch followed the same disciplined format, a brief statement of the problem being addressed, how far the technology had matured, its intellectual property position, whatever evidence of validation existed, the target market, the financing needed to move forward, and the single next milestone that would matter most. It was a deliberately commercial exercise, closer in spirit to an investment pitch than an academic presentation, and it gave the Minister a compressed but vivid sense of the University’s innovation pipeline at its most advanced and most investment ready.

Forging a National Action Plan

The two-day visit closed with an exit session built around adopting an agreed action matrix, the practical outcome the Ministry and University leadership had been working toward from the very first courtesy call. The Minister offered his observations and strategic guidance on what he had seen across both days, and University leadership joined Ministry officials in setting out agreed actions, the institutions and officers responsible for each, the timelines attached to them, and the mechanism by which progress would be measured. A joint press briefing and closing remarks brought the Minister’s maiden visit to Makerere University to an end, with both sides describing the two days as a starting point rather than a conclusion, the first working step in a relationship University leadership expects to deepen considerably as the agreed actions begin to move from paper into practice.

On the whole, the Minister’s maiden visit offered Makerere University an unusually direct platform to make its case, not through published statistics or polished brochures but through its own researchers, its own facilities and, most persistently throughout both days, its own students, standing at their benches and workstations, explaining in their own words what they had built and what it would take to take it further.

College of Health Sciences Quality Assurance (QA) Training in Assessments, Pedagogy and Competence Based Curriculum Held 18–19 June 2026 at Esella Hotel.

 Pedagogy, Assessment and Supervision Training Workshop

The College of Health Sciences has embarked on the journey to improve the teaching, assessment and preparation for the adoption of the competence-based curriculum.

The training was held on 18-19 June 2026, at Esella Hotel, Kira, the training targeted the teaching assistants, lecturers’ senior lecturers’ key administrators and some PhD fellows, generally the early career academic staff that are yet growing in the ranks.

Objectives

• Equip participants with modern pedagogical approaches for effective teaching and learning.
• Review and harmonize assessment strategies to ensure quality and fairness in academic evaluation.
• Enhance supervisory competencies for guiding graduate students in research and academic progress.
• Foster collaboration and shared experiences among facilitators, supervisors, and administrators.

The key focus areas for the training

• Guidelines in Assessment & Course Outlines- Dr. Cyprian Misinde -Chief Quality Assurance Officer.
• Competence Based Education and Assessment- Dr. Mike Kagawa
• Advancing continuous improvement in teaching, learning through teaching styles -Dr. Ssebowa Dorothy.
• Teaching methods Knowledge production and acquisition- Dr. Peter Ssenkusu
• Graduate Supervision Challenges and Opportunities- Prof. Grace Ndeezi.
• Competence Based Curriculum in line with the NCHE- Dr. Innocent Besigye.
• Feedback mechanisms in training- Dr. Irene Rebecca Namatende.

Key Outcomes for this training

• The participants gained the understanding of learner-centered teaching approaches and pedagogical principles.
• Acquired new skills supervisory skills, particularly in guiding research and addressing student challenges.
• Consensus on adopting standardized assessment tools across graduate programmes.
• Practical exposure to teaching models and interactive learning methods.
• Development of action plans for continuous professional development in pedagogy and supervision.
• The participants also acquired more skills in line with the competence-based curriculum as required by the National Council for Higher Education.

During the Discussion Key important Questions emerged as follows:

1. Who supervises the supervisor?
2. What is the difference between notion hours and contact hours?
3. The 60/40 way of assessments—can it be independent for every course unit taught or allocated differently?
4. How do we manage difficult supervisors?
5. How do we Coerce PhD students to be fully involved in departmental activities without them feeling Coerced?
6. How much time do we need to prepare for the review of the programmes in line with the competence-based curriculum as required by the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) and the World Health Organization (WHO)?

We truly thank the facilitators and the participants who made this training very informative and enlightened.  We also appreciate the Principal/Deputy CHS, the Chief QA Officer, Makerere University and the University Management for the enormous support and for making this activity possible.

The Deputy Vice Chancellor in charge of Academic Affairs (DVCAA) Prof. Sarah Ssali on 15^th July 2026 commended the Research and Education Network for Uganda (RENU)’s Industrial Trainee Program, describing it as the perfect hands-on intervention for the future workforce. She made the comments while on a guided tour of RENU’s on-campus Lab facility where ten undergraduate students from Makerere and other Universities are undergoing a two-month practical training.

Origin of tour

The tour was prompted by a 24^th June 2026 meeting with a RENU delegation led by CEO, Mr. Nicholas Mbonimpa, aimed at broadening the existing partnership with Makerere University beyond internet service provision to supporting teaching, learning and research activities. During the said meeting, Prof. Ssali expressed Makerere‘s desire to produce graduates that are not only academically grounded but also cognizant of the needs of the job market.

In his response then, Mr. Mbonimpa expressed RENU’s readiness to continue advancing digital transformation through advancing resilient connectivity, research infrastructure, and innovative initiatives that enhance teaching, learning, and research. He shared that the Senate Building’s computer network had been revamped in line with advancing resilient connectivity, and the initiative would be expanded to the College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology (CEDAT) buildings and other premises subsequently.

The RENU CEO further highlighted that resilient connectivity forms a good basis for the proposed Open Radio Access Network (RAN) Architecture deployment set to be done within six months, so as to boost training of students in 5G and other technologies. Other initiatives discussed included training staff and students on acquisition of Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) to improve visibility of their publications and research output. 

Training Program Lauded

Addressing student interns during the 15^th July guided tour, the DVCAA who was accompanied by the 92^nd Guild Speaker Rt. Hon. Trevis Mutatiina Muhwezi urged beneficiaries to harness all the technical and social opportunities accorded by the Program. “Not all students in your respective academic programmes had the benefit of being exposed to this kind of training so please make the most of it and utilize skills gained here beyond the classroom setting”.

The 2026 Industrial Trainee Program is equipping students with skills on how to diagnose and repair ICT equipment based on old and disused stock.

Prof Ssali was also toured the makerspace where solar-powered routers are manufactured and deployed to extend internet connectivity to both rural and urban locations. In 2023, RENU partnered with Mesh++, a Chicago-based connectivity solutions manufacturer, to manufacture solar-powered internet routers in Uganda. Since inception, over 200 units have been manufactured and deployed across various sites in Uganda, while over 80 units have been shipped to various African countries such as Malawi, Rwanda and South Sudan under the RENUMESH Technologies joint venture.

Partnerships Inspiring New Prototypes

The RENU CEO nevertheless pointed to a long turnaround time for shipping parts from the U.S. as one of the drawbacks hindering the product’s rapid deployment. As a result, RENU, in response to the Ugandan Government’s call for import substitution and local capacity development is developing a solar-powered internet router with some of the components sourced from Ugandan companies Innovex and Chloride Excide.

“Innovex will supply the Internet of Things (IoT) component to help RENU remotely monitor and control the router while Chloride Excide will provide the batteries” Mr. Mbonimpa explained. He added that some of the current lot of trainees were already running simulations on the prototype and proposing how the device can be further refined so as to increase its portability and reduce its price.

A call for Expansion

At the conclusion of the tour, Prof. Ssali who commended the use of modular Ugandan components for the prototype thanked the RENU team to exposing students to real-world technological deployments. She nevertheless urged the CEO and his team to expand the program’s intake beyond ten trainees and duration beyond the current two months so as to give students a richer experience.

The CEO RENUMESH Technologies Mr. Brian Masiga thanked the DVCAA for following up their 24^th June meeting with the visit, which demonstrates that the University Management values students’ development of practical skills. He equally thanked Prof. Ssali for Management’s support to RENU activities and pledged to further refine the prototype to produce a cheaper and more portable proudly Ugandan product.