Projects

Running Research Grants 2024-2025

CoCIS has successfully secured multiple research grants through competitive proposal writing. These grants not only supplement the university’s resource envelope but also enhance human resource capacity and support cutting-edge research. The table 4 below provides a detailed list of the awarded grants.

List of Grants Received for Research

  1. Name
    of Project

    Funder
    & Country

    PI
    Name

    Project
    Period (Start – End)

    Currency

    Budget
    Amount

    Managing Hub for Artificial
    Intelligence for Sexual and Reproductive Health in Africa: AI4MSRH Hub

    IDRC (Canada)

    Assoc. Prof. Engineer Bainomugisha

    1st Nov 2021 – 31st Oct 2024

    USD

    137,867

    Clean Air for Healthier Cities:
    Scaling up Participatory and Collaborative Monitoring, Modelling, and
    Advocacy for Air Quality Management

    US Department of State

    Assoc. Prof. Engineer Bainomugisha

    30th Sept 2022 – 30th Sept 2025

    USD

    478,835.60

    Scaling up AirQo to African Cities

    Google (USA)

    Assoc. Prof. Engineer Bainomugisha

    23rd Nov 2021 – 31st July 2025

    USD

    3,000,000

    Crane Cloud

    Paul Maritz (USA)

    Assoc. Prof. Engineer Bainomugisha

    25th June 2018

    USD

    306,920.24

    Establishing DeepMind AI
    Scholarships at Makerere University

    DeepMind Technologies (UK)

    Assoc. Prof. Engineer Bainomugisha

    May 2023 – 2024

    USD

    93,980

     

     

     

     

    AirQount: Autonomous Vehicle
    Emissions Estimation for Low-Resource Cities

    Arm Limited (UK)

    Assoc. Prof. Engineer Bainomugisha

    25th June 2024 – 30th June 2025

    USD

    249,900

    Google Research Awards

    Google LLC (USA)

    Assoc. Prof. Engineer Bainomugisha

    —

    USD

    100,000

    Leveraging Data Science
    Applications to Improve Children’s Environmental Health in Sub-Saharan Africa
    (DICE)

    NIH

    Assoc. Prof. Engineer Bainomugisha

    Sept 2023 – Aug 2026

    USD

    98,508

    Benchmarking Automatic Speech
    Recognition Models for African Languages

    Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

    Dr. Joyce Nakatumba Nabende

    21st March 2024 – 31st March 2025

    USD

    249,400

    TWAS-UNESCO (SG-NAPI)

    UNESCO

    Dr. Joyce Nakatumba Nabende

    —

    USD

    9,100

    RTB Breeding: A Consolidated
    Environment

    International Potato Center (Peru)

    Dr. Joyce Nakatumba Nabende

    16th Dec 2023 – 31st Dec 2024

    USD

    56,923

    RTB Cassava Breeding

    International Potato Center (Peru)

    Dr. Joyce Nakatumba Nabende

    1st Jan 2023 – 31st Dec 2024

    USD

    40,000

    Applied Human-Machine Intelligence
    in East Africa (AHUMAIN)

    European Union / Erasmus Program

    Dr. Joyce Nakatumba Nabende

    1st Jan 2023 – 31st Dec 2025

    EUR

    141,142

    Understanding Gender Biases in
    Building Automatic Speech Recognition Systems in Africa (GRAIN)

    IPAR (Senegal)

    Dr. Joyce Nakatumba Nabende

    1st Aug 2023 – 30th Nov 2024

    USD

    41,080

     

     

     

     

     

    Project Amplify – Improving AI
    through Community-Based Feedback

    Google LLC

    Dr. Joyce Nakatumba Nabende

    Sept 2023 – July 2024

    USD

    200,000

    Extrapolating Counts from Open
    Buildings with Sentinel-2

    Google Research Collabs Africa

    Sanya Rahman

    —

    USD

    35,000

    Analyzing ChatGPT for
    Cross-Lingual Agricultural Advisory for Smallholder Farmers

    Bill & Melinda Gates
    Foundation

    Dr. Joyce Nakatumba Nabende

    10th July 2023 – 30th April 2024

    USD

    150,000

    Waxal Project Partnership (Google
    Voices)

    Google LLC

    Dr. Joyce Nakatumba Nabende

    July 2023 – April 2024

    USD

    345,000

    OCULAR: AI Automated Mobile
    Microscopic Diagnosis of Malaria, Cancer & Tuberculosis

    Google (USA)

    Dr. Rose Nakasi

    Sept 2023 – 2026

    USD

    1,500,000

    Pathways to Change: Gender Justice
    in STEM Research (GeJuSTA)

    University of Cape Town (South
    Africa)

    Ms. Ssozi Fiona Catherine

    1st Jan 2022 – —

    ZAR

    178,046

    ICT Labs for the Pathogen Economy

    Government of Uganda

    Dr. Joyce Nakatumba Nabende

    1st June 2022 – 30th Nov 2023

    UGX

    1,000,000,000

    AFRETECH

    Carnegie Mellon University Africa

    Assoc. Prof. Engineer Bainomugisha

    1st Aug 2023 – 31st May 2026

    USD

    79,695

    Epilepsy

    Makerere University College of
    Health Sciences

    Dr. Daudi Jjingo

    1st July 2023 – Dec 2024

    USD

    11,000

     

     

     

     

     

    Adaptive Environmental Monitoring
    Network for East Africa (AdEMNEA)

    NORHED II

    Dr. Julianne Sansa Otim

    1st July 2022 – 30th June 2026

    NOK

    9,359,490

    Next Generation-Cassava

    Bill & Melinda Gates
    Foundation

    Dr. Joyce Nakatumba Nabende

    April 2018 – March 2023

    USD

    334,634

    Improving Machine Translation for
    Informal Usage of Ugandan Languages

    Google LLC (USA)

    Dr. Peter Nabende

    1st Nov 2023 – 30th Oct 2024

    USD

    30,000

    RIF

    —

    Dr. Namatovu Hasifah

    2023 – 2024

    UGX

    493,157,714

    Enhancing Groundnuts Value Chain
    Information Management Using SUFACE Model

    RIF

    Dr. Drake Patrick Mirembe

    2023 – 2024

    UGX

    169,622,000

    Data Science Without Borders

    APHRC (Kenya)

    Dr. Joyce Nakatumba Nabende

    1st Aug 2024 – 31st Dec 2026

    USD

    336,186

    RTB Breeding: Consolidated
    Investment (Cassava)

    Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

    Dr. Joyce Nakatumba Nabende

    1st Jan 2024 – March 2025

    USD

    85,386

    RTB Breeding: Consolidated
    Investment (Sweet Potatoes)

    Bill & Melinda Gates
    Foundation

    Dr. Joyce Nakatumba Nabende

    1st Jan 2024 – March 2025

    USD

    48,100

    RTB Breeding: Consolidated
    Investment (NARO)

    National Agricultural Research
    Organisation

    Dr. Joyce Nakatumba Nabende

    2nd Oct 2024 – 31st March 2025

    USD

    19,900

    Makerere University AI for
    Development Research Lab

    IDRC (Canada) & FDCO

    Dr. Joyce Nakatumba Nabende

    1st Oct 2024 – 30th Nov 2026

    USD

    574,900

    AI4D – FDCO Innovation: Scaling AI
    for Health

    IDI

    Assoc. Prof. Engineer Bainomugisha

    1st Oct 2024 – 30th Sept 2026

    USD

    100,984

Research Grants 2023-2024

  1. Professor Tonny Oyana (PI), SIDA-DICTS Project No. 381: Integrating ICT based support in research, teaching and innovations 2018/19 worth 6 Billion UGX.
  2. Engineer Bainomugisha – October 2018-May 2019. Sub-award “Policy Research Program on Pollution Management and Competitiveness of Cities” funded by the World Bank Group cf. US$65,930
  3. Engineer Bainomugisha – December 2018-June 2019. Seed Grant “AirQo: Low-cost and Participatory Air Pollution Monitoring” funded by NRF South Africa. cf. Euro 7000
  4. Engineer Bainomugisha – Jan 2019-July 2019. Sub-award “Probabilistic low-cost air pollution monitoring ” Funded by UK Global Challenges Research Fund – UK Research and Innovation cf. approx. US$35,000
  5. Rehema Baguma – 2019-2023- “Enhancing Quality and Internationalisation of Study Programmes Through Mobile Transformative Pedagogy (EQIP)” by NORPART. (Co-PI with University of Agder, Norway, University of Rwanda and Paul Muyinda from the College of Education and External Studies-CEES)
  6. Fiona Ssozi – Jan-June 2019. Capacitating Educators Of Visually Impaired Learners In Using Assistive Technologies, COCIS Seed Funding, UGX 10Million
  7. Rehema Baguma – Jan-June 2019. An App for Counseling Youth On Pyscho-Social Issues: A Case of University Students,  COCIS Seed Funding, UGX 10Million
  8. Florence Kivunike – Jan-June 2019. Towards a Public Participatory Approach for Evaluating Quality of e-Government Services to Enable Sustainable Development, COCIS Seed Funding, UGX 10Million
  9. Hasifah Namatovu – Jan-June 2019. A Smart Sensor-Based System For Detecting Biogas Leakage In The Supply System, COCIS Seed Funding, UGX 10Million
  10. John Ngubiri – Jan-June 2019. Towards an Efficient Electronic Market Place for Small holder Farmers in Uganda, COCIS Seed Funding, UGX 10Million

Research projects

  1. BRIGHT: Building Research Capacity in Innovative Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) for Sustainable Socio-economic Growth in Uganda. This project is a collaboration between Chalmers University, University of Gothenburg, and Makerere University. This project supports ten PhD students. Researchers involved are: Associate Professor Engineer Bainomugisha (PI)/email contact: baino@cis.mak.ac.ug
  2. E-Services: Training for Sustainable Spatially Enabled E-Services Delivery in Uganda. This project is a collaboration between Lund University in Sweden, and Makerere University. This project supports six PhDs and two masters’ students. Researchers involved are: Associate Professor Gilbert Maiga (PI)/email contact: gmaiga@cit.ac.ug
  3. KIPS: Building Capacity for Knowledge and Information Production and Sharing for Socio- economic Development in Uganda. This project is a collaboration between Swedish School of Library and Information Science, University of Borås, Sweden, and Makerere University. The project supports five academic staff doing their PhDs at Makerere University. Researchers involved are: Dr. George William Kiyingi (PI)/email contact: wkiyingi@gmail.com
  4. WIMEA-ICT: Improving Weather Information Management in East Africa for effective service provision through the application of suitable ICTs (www.wimea-ict.net). Dr. Julianne Sansa-Otim (PI)/email contact: sansa@cit.ac.ug. WIMEA-ICT is a combined research and capacity building project funded by the NORAD under the NORHED scheme. It is cooperation between Makerere University (coordinating institution), Dar-es-Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT), the University of Juba and the University of Bergen.
  5. EDULINK II: “Deploying Interactive Online Networking Platform for Improving Quality and Relevance of African University Graduates to Labor Markets”. The EDULINK project member institutions include; Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (Kenya), Egerton University (Kenya), RUFORUM (Uganda), and Makerere University (Uganda). Associate Professor Engineer Bainomugisha (PI)/email contact: baino@cis.mak.ac.ug.
  6. D. Jjingo and Dr. Florence Kivunike, NIH training grant US$ 1.25 m with CHS
  7. Ernest Mwebaze, Smartphone-based Crop Surveillance project (mCROPS), US$ 500,000, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
  8. Ernest Mwebaze, Scaled deployment of smart-phone agro-applications for field based diagnosis and real-time surveillance data collection, US$ 76,000, PEER, NAS-NSF
  9. Engineer Bainomugisha, AirQo: Low-cost Air Pollution Monitoring, US$ 52,000, DIL/USAID
  10. Engineer Bainomugisha, SoCoMoT, Low-cost Internet of Things Technology for Soil Conditions Monitoring, US$ 80,000, UNCST
  11. Sarah Kaddu, EU grant (EU ICT H2020), €111775.00, Digitization of Cultural Heritage.