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.

The Honourable Eng. Jonard Asiimwe Akiiki, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation in the Office of the President, spent his first day at Makerere University immersed in the work of the very people the Ministry exists to support, its researchers, its innovators and, above all, its students. The visit, his maiden engagement with the University since taking up the docket, opened on Tuesday 21 July 2026 under the theme of research infrastructure, emerging technologies and enterprise creation, and by the time the day closed, the Minister had walked through workshops, laboratories and innovation hubs spanning three colleges, each one built around work led substantially by Makerere students at different levels of study.

Setting the tone

The day began with an opening session at which University leadership laid out, in fairly direct terms, the scale of what Makerere is building. The Vice Chancellor took the Minister through the University’s research and innovation strategy, touching on its major infrastructure investments, its externally funded research portfolio, its growing stock of patents and intellectual property, and the start ups and spin off companies that have emerged from University research in recent years. He spoke about commercialised technologies already in use beyond the University gates, about industry partnerships that have grown out of research collaborations, and about the specialised human capital Makerere continues to produce in science, technology and innovation fields. The presentation was framed deliberately around the National Development Plan IV and the Tenfold Growth Strategy, with the Vice Chancellor making the case that Makerere’s research output is not an academic exercise sitting apart from national priorities but a direct contributor to them.

The Minister responded with a strategic vision address of his own, setting out what he expects from the science, technology and innovation sector over the coming years and the role he wants public universities to play in delivering it. What followed was a candid, moderated exchange in which University leadership pressed the Minister on policy direction and the operating environment for research, while he in turn asked pointed questions about how quickly Makerere‘s research strengths can be converted into products, services and enterprises that create jobs and generate revenue. It set the tone for a day that would, from that point on, be less about presentations and more about seeing the work itself.

CEDAT Showcases Seven Projects

That work began in earnest at the College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology (CEDAT), where the Minister was welcomed by Vice Chancellor Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe and College Principal Prof. Moses Musinguzi, and where senior scholars had presented their innovations directly to him. The Minister did not hide his familiarity with the terrain. “This is my college because I come from engineering mathematics”, he told his hosts, adding that he intended to work with the College under the guidance of the President as the sector moves forward.

He was candid, too, about what he had come to look for. His mission, he explained, as directed by the President, is to ensure that scientists’ projects move beyond the laboratory and into commercialisation. “My mechanism is touch, don’t do things rashly. Whatever you do, ensure it is ready to be seen nationally and internationally”. It was a line that set the tone for the rest of his time at CEDAT, an insistence that promising research findings alone are not enough unless they can be shown to the world and, eventually, sold in it.

The projects put before him bore that out. Researchers presented work on the value addition of tungsten ores into tungsten carbides for sustainable mineral development, a Smart Home Energy Project, and the development of solar water pumps suited to local conditions. CEDAT has Direct Reduction Technology aimed at the metallisation of Ugandan iron ores, and Smart Mobility Corridors that use artificial intelligence and Internet of Things analytics to improve road safety. The College also showcased work on electrifying informal urban transport, built around evidence-based support for the adoption of electric motorcycles, alongside research into the use of iron oxide nanoparticles in the treatment of wastewater and drinking water. Taken as a set, the seven projects made a fairly complete case for what CEDAT researchers and their students have been quietly building, work that spans mineral processing, renewable energy, smart infrastructure, transport and environmental protection.

A walk-through of Living Labs

At the Marconi Research and Innovation Laboratory, engineering students and their supervisors walked him through further work on infrastructure innovations developed within the College, much of it born out of final year projects and postgraduate research that never quite stopped after the marks were awarded. A stop at the MAPRONANO facility introduced the Minister to its scanning electron microscopy and materials characterisation equipment, a resource that has quietly become central to nanotechnology and advanced materials work across several colleges, not just CEDAT.

What became clear as the Minister moved between benches was how much of the College’s engineering output is aimed squarely at problems close to home. Renewable energy prototypes on display were built around the realities of Uganda’s power grid rather than borrowed wholesale from foreign textbooks, and several of the projects, from the tungsten carbide work to the iron ore metallisation research, dealt directly with turning Uganda’s own mineral resources into higher value products. Facility leads explained that this local orientation is deliberate, a way of ensuring that engineering training at Makerere produces graduates who can solve the problems in front of them rather than only the ones described in imported case studies.

Speaking more broadly on the visit, the Minister underscored the role of universities in driving Uganda’s industrialisation and technological advancement, noting Makerere‘s long legacy in publishing and pledging to help it become a hub for commercialisation as well. “Our future prosperity depends on strengthening our scientific base and ensuring innovation is locally developed and supported”, he said. Prof. Musinguzi thanked the Ministry for its support, affirming that Makerere remains committed to championing academic and research excellence in Uganda and the region.

Strides made in Artificial Intelligence

From CEDAT, the delegation moved to the Research and Education Network for Uganda and the College of Computing and Information Sciences, where the conversation shifted from workshops and welding to compute power and code. The centrepiece here was the National AI Research Cloud hosted at RENU, a facility that gives researchers and students across the country access to the kind of computing infrastructure that serious artificial intelligence work demands, infrastructure that would otherwise be well beyond the reach of most individual departments. Inside the College’s Artificial Intelligence and Data Science laboratories, the Minister was shown a range of applications built on this infrastructure, many of them the direct output of graduate and undergraduate research projects rather than staff led initiatives handed down from above.

The applications on display touched health, agriculture, environment, climate, cybersecurity and public service delivery, a spread that gave a fair sense of just how broadly Makerere‘s computing talent has been put to work. Lab leads walked the Minister through how student teams had identified real problems, in some cases working directly with government agencies or private sector partners, and built working systems around them. Among the examples presented were tools built by student researchers to support disease surveillance and diagnosis, systems designed to help farmers make better decisions using satellite and sensor data, and early-stage cybersecurity tools developed to protect the kind of digital public services the government has been rolling out in recent years. The Minister, for his part, pushed the conversation toward questions of governance and access, wanting to understand how a shared national resource like the AI Research Cloud is allocated, how its operating costs are sustained, and what it would take to scale similar compute access to other public universities. It is, after all, one thing to build a laboratory full of promising student projects, and quite another to build the national infrastructure that lets such laboratories multiply.

Exploring Agricultural Value Chains

The final stop of the segment covered here was the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES), where the focus turned from digital systems to the physical business of turning raw produce into finished, marketable products. At the Food Technology and Business Incubation Centre, the Minister toured facilities for agricultural engineering fabrication, mechanisation and post harvest handling, the kind of unglamorous but essential technology that determines whether a farmer’s harvest reaches a processor intact or spoils before it gets there. Alongside this, the Centre showcased its food formulation, pilot processing, quality assurance and packaging capabilities, all of them built around a philosophy of taking a product from laboratory bench to shop shelf without students having to leave campus to find the equipment to do it.

Much of what the Minister saw at the Centre had been developed by students working through the Incubation programme, turning coursework and research interests into small, functioning enterprises. Demonstrations centred on some of the country’s priority value chains, coffee, banana, dairy, cereals and fruits among them, with young entrepreneurs presenting finished or near finished products alongside the research that had gone into developing them. Several of the enterprises on display had already moved beyond the prototype stage, with student founders explaining how they had navigated food safety certification, sourced packaging, and begun testing their products with real customers, small but telling steps that separate a good idea from an actual business. For a Ministry keen on enterprise creation as much as pure research output, it was arguably the clearest illustration yet of the day’s underlying argument, that Makerere‘s students are not simply studying science and technology in the abstract but are already building businesses around it, often before they have even graduated.

Taking Stock of an Engaging First Day

Taken together, the four stops covered on the first day, the opening strategic session, the engineering and manufacturing tour at CEDAT, the digital and artificial intelligence infrastructure at RENU and CoCIS, and the food technology and agro industrial work at CAES, offered the Minister a cross section of a university whose research culture runs considerably deeper than its published output alone would suggest. What stood out consistently across the four was the extent to which students themselves, rather than only senior researchers, were the ones presenting the work, explaining the thinking behind it, and answering the Minister’s questions directly. University officials were keen to point this out at every stop, framing it as evidence that Makerere is not merely producing research papers but producing a generation of scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs already at work on the problems the Ministry has been asked to help solve.

The Minister’s first day at Makerere continued beyond the stops covered here, taking him further into the University’s natural sciences platforms and its innovation and enterprise pipeline before the day’s programme drew to a close. His engagement with the University resumes on Wednesday, 22 July 2026, with a second day focused on health and life sciences, before culminating in a strategic dialogue between Makerere and the Ministry and the adoption of an agreed action matrix to guide follow up work between the two institutions.

_{By Moses Lutaaya}

KAMPALA – The Productivity Measurement Information System (Pro-MIS), a digital platform designed to assess, monitor, and improve productivity across Ministries, Departments, Agencies (MDAs), and local governments, was developed by a multidisciplinary team of researchers led by Prof. Robert Wamala, the Director for Research, Innovations and Partnerships at Makerere University, with funding from the Makerere University Research and Innovations Fund (Mak-RIF).

The system is now being rolled out by the Government of Uganda in collaboration with Makerere University as part of broader reforms aimed at strengthening efficiency, accountability, and evidence-based decision-making in public service delivery.

Prof. Wamala said the development of the Productivity Measurement Framework and Pro-MIS system was motivated by the persistent challenge of measuring how effectively public institutions convert resources into tangible outputs.

He explained that while institutions routinely report activities and outputs, the missing link has been the ability to measure efficiency in the use of inputs to generate results.

“The big question has always been, how do we measure productivity? We are pumping resources into institutions, but how do we know that what is being produced is efficient and impactful?” Prof. Wamala said.

He noted that the framework introduces a structured approach to productivity measurement across government, focusing on inputs, processes, outputs, and outcomes, and enabling data-driven policy and management decisions.

Prof. Wamala added that Makerere University remains committed to supporting government in strengthening innovation systems that improve public sector performance and service delivery.

In a special, Prof. Wamala extended his sincere gratitude to The Ministry of Public Service (MoPS) especially  Permanent Secretary and Department of Management Services for the visionary partnership and leadership, Makerere University Vice Chancellor Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe for rallying scientists to support evidence-based policy, Makerere University Research and Innovation Fund (Mak-RIF), Chairperson Prof. Fred Musagazi Masaazi, and the GMC for the funding as well as The District Staff who volunteered to validate tools and gave us data for the development of the Framework.

The rollout engagement brought together representatives from several “champion institutions” selected to pioneer implementation of the system, including the Office of President, Office of Prime Minister, Ministry of Local Government, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development; Government Analytical Laboratory, Public Service Commission, Education Service Commission, Makerere University Business School, Ministry of Internal Affairs, among others.

The Acting Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Public Service, Mr. Rogers Kaija Irumba, said government is introducing champion institutions to lead the rollout of productivity measurement across the public sector.

He explained that the initiative is part of a broader reform agenda aimed at institutionalizing performance and productivity tracking in government operations.

“We are trying to bring on board a number of champion institutions. This is a new concept. So we are trying to bring on board a number of institutions to champion the entire productivity concept,” Mr. Kaija said.

He noted that government is strengthening systems that will allow productivity to be measured systematically at all levels of the public service.

Mr. Kaija emphasized that the initiative aligns with the National Development Plan IV and the Public Sector Transformation Programme, which prioritize efficiency, accountability, and results-based management.

He further explained that productivity measurement is expected to support government efforts to demonstrate value for money and improve service delivery outcomes.

On her part, the Commissioner for Management Services at the Ministry of Public Service, Ms. Allen Kakama, said productivity measurement addresses a long-standing gap in public sector performance evaluation.

She explained that productivity differs from performance management in that it focuses on the relationship between inputs used and outputs produced.

“Productivity is looking at how much resources you have used to produce an output. It is different from performance appraisal, which looks at whether targets have been achieved,” she said.

Ms. Kakama noted that the Pro-MIS system will enable government to measure productivity at institutional, departmental, and individual levels, helping to identify efficiency gaps and improve service delivery.

She added that the system will help reduce wastage and improve the quality and speed of public service outputs.

“We want to reduce wastage and improve efficiency. If two institutions are given the same resources, but one produces better quality and faster outputs, then we must be able to measure and understand that difference,” she said.

She emphasized that the system will strengthen accountability, improve decision-making, and enhance overall public sector performance.

The Government of Uganda said Pro-MIS will initially be piloted in selected institutions before being scaled up across all Ministries, Departments, Agencies, and Local Governments nationwide.