Computing & IS

CoCIS Annual Report 2019/2020

Published

5 years ago

May 7, 2021

Mark Wamai

The Principal CoCIS-Prof. Tonny Oyana (Right) and Deputy Principal CoCIS- Assoc. Prof. Agnes Rwashana Semwanga (Left) at the Press Conference held on 8th May 2019 to announce the US$ 1.3m Google AI Impact Grant awarded to AirQo.

We are extremely grateful and privileged to share our Annual Report for Academic Year 2019/20 with Makerere University community. The College is on track to be a thoughtful leader in shaping a strong, shared vision of academic success in ICT flagship research and education.

Although the first six months of academic year 2019/20 have been very exciting and full of significant accomplishments, the last six months have been quite challenging due to the unprecedented pandemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SAR-CoV-2), that causes Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). I anticipate that Science, our collective actions and any other adversity will yield positive outcomes, which will address current hardships that have significantly affected our livelihoods.

I take this opportunity to thank COCIS staff, faculty, and students for the resilience you have demonstrated and for all you have to do to keep our college moving forward to meet our strategic goals. Achieving academic success continues to remain an intentional outcome of our research and educational activities.

Let us continue to live healthier lives and practice good hygiene habits.

This academic year I would like to highlight excellent research and innovations that are being carried by our students and faculty. Why is our focus on Research and Innovations? At the heart of our distinctive model of ICT teaching and learning, we ensure the production of fine and high-quality human resource, while with research and innovations, we wish to increase the production of critical breakthroughs of ideas that advances scientific knowledge and innovations. This, we believe, will culminate into technological solutions. Currently, our college has a majority population of young faculty with incredible potential and a top 10% talented crop of students in the nation ready to exponentially push our research and innovations agenda forward. For example, our amazing faculty and students are building IoT sensor devices for smart homes, smoke detection, indoor and outdoor asthma monitoring and management, and robotics.

As College Principal, I appreciate the excellent progress we are making in conducting high-quality research. Our research capacity has significantly grown and it is very strong. We have a total number of 30 active grants secured either internally (22) or externally (10). Our graduate enrolment now stands at 9.6% up from 3% three years ago. We are on a steady march to meet our current target of 15%. This academic year we graduated six PhDs, 24 Masters, and over three faculty successfully completed their PhDs. Our College continues to offer impeccable educational and research opportunities for students and at-large community.

Thank you very much for reading our Annual Report and when you are in Makerere University stop by and visit this amazing college. We are committed as a college to be the leading regional hub for Data Science and AI research.

Professor Tonny J. Oyana
PRINCIPAL

Makerere-CoCIS-Annual-Report-2019-2020 Download

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Computing & IS

Bridging Mental Health Service Gap in Africa using AI

Published

2 weeks ago

June 5, 2026

Mak Editor

Natural Language Processing (NLP) for Mental Health Service Improvement in Africa. Makerere University Centre for Artificial Intelligence (Mak-AI), Kampala Uganda, East Africa.

How can AI help bridge the mental health service gap in Africa?

Through this project, teams from Uganda and Tanzania implemented AI-powered call center solutions at national mental health hospitals, leveraging Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze conversations in local languages and generate insights that support better service delivery.

Some of the key achievements include:

Developing ASR models for Ugandan-accented English and Luganda mental health recordings
Assessing the quality of mental health conversations
Detecting mental health topics from speech recordings
Generating escalations and decision-support insights for healthcare practitioners

The project also reinforced important lessons: local-language AI improves accessibility, user-centered design builds trust, and privacy and ethics must remain at the center of AI-driven healthcare innovation.

As Africa continues to embrace digital health solutions, initiatives like these demonstrate the potential of AI to strengthen mental healthcare systems and improve access to quality care for underserved communities.

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Computing & IS

CoCIS CIPSD Short Courses Jul-Sept 2026

Published

3 weeks ago

May 29, 2026

Mak Editor

A male student studies on his laptop in the College of Computing and Information Sciences (CoCIS), Block B, Makerere University, Kampala Uganda.

Makerere University College of Computing and Information Sciences (CoCIS) is the main ICT Training, Research and Consultancy Centre in Makerere University. The College has six Academic departments comprising of the Department of Computer Science, Department of Networks, Department of Information Technology, Department of Information Systems, Department of Library and Information Sciences, and the Department of Records and Archives management.

In addition to the mainstream degree programmes, CoCIS has a specialized Center for Innovations and Professional Skills Development (CIPSD) which delivers state-of-art training in ICT e.g. the Cisco Networking Academy for Cisco related courses, the Microsoft IT Academy Program for Microsoft related courses, International Computer Driving License course, Oracle Certified Training center for Oracle, Linux and Unix Training center. CIPSD also offers Machine Learning, Big Data Analytics, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Ethical Hacking as online courses. The College is an authorized Testing center, operating under PearsonVUE and Kryterion. Listed in the table (see downloads below) are the courses currently offered at the Center with their next start dates, duration, and cost.

All courses are at affordable fees catering for Students, Vacists, Professionals and
Anyone who wants to start a career in ICT or polish his/her ICT skills.

Register here: https://forms.gle/eTVwcAfBGXaVLL9b7

Contact Information

E-mail: psd.cis@mak.ac.ug
Tel: +256 752 779964 | +256 701 806656 | +256 752 373023
URL: https://cocis.mak.ac.ug/cipsd/

Makerere-CoCIS-CIPSD-Advert-Jul-Aug-Sept-2026-Intake-Dates Download

Computing & IS

CoCIS CIPSD Short Courses for Vacists, Students and Professionals

Published

1 month ago

May 19, 2026

Mak Editor

Block B of the College of Computing and Information Sciences (CoCIS), Makerere University, Kampala Uganda.

Click link below for start dates and to register:

https://forms.gle/eTVwcAfBGXaVLL9b7

All courses are at affordable fees catering for Students, Vacists, Professionals and
Anyone who wants to start a career in ICT or polish his/her ICT skills.