Makerere University, together with 28 other partners across Africa and Europe have been awarded funding of EUR 6,962,820 by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 to collaborate and implement a five-year project “Renewable Energies for Africa: Effective Valorization of Agri-food Wastes (REFFECT AFRICA).”

The project seeks to demonstrate innovative, reliable, and adapted sustainable energy solutions based on the valorization of biomass wastes from the agri-food industry. REFFECT AFRICA will build biomass gasification demonstrators at three African locations including Ghana, Morocco, and South Africa. The project will cover both urbanized and rural contexts in Africa, as well as the different socio-economic backgrounds. The demonstrators will be adapted and optimized to a wide variety of biomass wastes available in the specified locations, producing electricity for productive use.

Beyond electricity, the installed demonstrators will provide a range of secondary uses to communities to close the energy-food-water cycle. These include heating or cooling, biochar, steam for sterilization or food processing, water and pathogen analysis. Other business model approaches in REFFECT AFRICA include biomass supply and logistics. Beyond these, the partners in REFFECT AFRICA will take advantage of digital tools to;1) achieve more useful and profitable exploitation pathways for plant operators and entrepreneurs, 2) impact policymakers in order to boost the transition to renewables in Africa and 3) train and raise awareness on a new generation of African stakeholders.

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The College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology (CEDAT) held its Annual Open day on the 19^th and 20^th of November 2021 on the Theme; ‘Innovation and Technology in Combating Crisis’

The event which was also an avenue to celebrate 50 years of Makerere Engineering Society (MES) was characterized by a display of many student ideas and innovations in line with the theme of the event.

The Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology Hon. Dr. Monica Musenero was Chief Guest at the event held at Makerere University Central teaching Facility II.  In her remarks Dr. Monica Musenero expressed her commitment towards building the future in partnership with the young engineers. She applauded the great work done by the students as seen from the exhibitions and expressed optimism that the future of the nation was assured with the kind of work the students were doing.

‘We are standing at cross roads, we are standing between the past and the future, standing between  what has been and what we want to be,  she said  adding that we need to choose whether we go forward and take our future in our hands or choose to sit down, lament and blame everybody else’.

Dr. Musenero noted that the young people were the face of the future and congratulated Makerere Engineering Society for the 50 year milestone whose success she said, should be used to reflect on what had been realized as seen from the number of Engineers and products nurtured. She emphasized to the students that they were privileged given that science and technology where engineering falls was a key component for development.

The Minister informed the gathering that her Ministry was ready to support ideas and innovations in areas that included digital technology such as electronics, infrastructure engineering like roads and railways, mobility, the pathogen economy, import substitution and creating products for export as well as space engineering. She charged the students to have the right mindset and determination and assured them of the support of the Ministry.

The 2021 CEDAT open day later in the course of the event hosted the State Minister for Minerals Hon. Peter Lokeris who not only inspected the exhibition of the innovations by the students but also handed over a prize of Five Hundred Thousand Uganda Shillings to the best innovator courtesy of the Uganda Electricity Generation Company Limited (UEGCL).

Hon. Lokeris informed the Engineering students that the Mineral Development sector had a big docket and urged them to continue striving to become big innovators as demonstrated in the exhibition.  He noted that the positive side of COVID 19 made it possible for certain innovations to be seen and that in times of crisis, the mind works at its best.

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Dr. Eng. Dorothy Okello has been inducted as a Fellow of the Uganda National Academy of Sciences (UNAS).

Dr. Engineer Dorothy Okello is the Dean, School of Engineering, College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology (CEDAT), Makerere University. She is also, Senior Lecturer, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering as well as a Researcher with netLabs!

A number of staff in CEDAT led by the Principal Prof. Henry Alinaitwe extended congratulations to her for the achievement. Many applauded her for this and many other achievements. She pledged to work towards ensuring that more staff in CEDAT get enrolled.

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