User:Susan Schneegans/sandbox/science and technology in Uganda

Science and technology in Uganda examines government efforts to develop a national innovation system and the impact of these policies.

Socio-economic context
Uganda is a low-income country. It has performed well economically since the start of the century, although growth (3.7% in 2013) seems to have been affected by the slow global recovery from the 2008–2009 financial crisis.

In 2013, manufacturing contributed 10% of GDP, compared to 21% for industry as a whole and 25% for agriculture. Half of GDP came (54%) from the services sector. In 2012, Uganda's main exports were all agricultural products: unroasted coffee (30.6%), cotton (5.6%) and tobacco (5.5%).

In 2014, Uganda was ranked 36th out of 52 countries on the Ibrahim Index of African Governance. Some 16% of the population had access to internet and 44% a mobile phone subscription in 2013. One in four (26%) Ugandans had access to sanitation, 42% to improved water and 15% to electricity in 2011.

In 2013, the population was growing at a rate of 3.31% per year. In sub-Saharan Africa, only Niger (3.87% per year) and South Sudan (3.84%) recorded faster growth rates. Uganda has achieved universal primary education but only one-quarter of pupils attend secondary school (27% gross enrolment ratio in 2013) and 4% university. Tertiary-level enrolment grew from 92,605 to 140,087 students between 2006 and 2011. These figures cover students enrolled in post-secondary non-degree programmes, bachelor's, master's and PhD programmes.

National Science, Technology and Innovation Policy
The National Science, Technology and Innovation Policy dates from 2009. Its overarching goal is to ‘strengthen national capability to generate, transfer and apply scientific knowledge, skills and technologies that ensure sustainable utilisation of natural resources for the realisation of Uganda’s development objectives.’ The policy precedes Uganda Vision 2040, which was launched in April 2013 to transform ‘Ugandan society from a peasant to a modern and prosperous country within 30 years,’ in the words of the Cabinet. Uganda Vision 2040 vows to strengthen the private sector, improve education and training, modernize infrastructure and the underdeveloped services and agriculture sectors, foster industrialization and promote good governance, among other goals. Potential areas for economic development include oil and gas, tourism, minerals and information and communication technologies (ICTs).

The National Council for Science and Technology falls under the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development. The Council’s strategic objectives include: The National Council for Science and Technology identified the following shortcomings in higher education in 2007:
 * the rationalization of science and technology policy to boost technological innovation;
 * enhancing the national system of research, intellectual property, product development and technologytransfer;
 * strengthening public acceptance of science and technology; and
 * upgrading institutional research capacity.
 * very few science degree programmes exist;
 * enrolment in basic sciences is negligible;
 * laboratories are generally scarce, under-equipped and obsolete;
 * very limited funding exists for capital or recurrent expenses for training in science and engineering;
 * almost all research funding comes from external (donor) sources, making it unsustainable and difficult to ensure a national research for development-driven agenda;
 * Despite the burgeoning enrolment, very little systematic attention is being paid to the development of domestic graduate education. Fewer than 500 professors in the entire country have PhDs and fewer than 10 new PhDs are awarded annually in sciences and engineering;
 * fee policies and lack of adequate infrastructure for science and engineering encourage the expansion of undergraduate programmes in arts and humanities, resulting in a dwindling intake for courses in science and engineering and a general lack of interest in, and focus on, these areas;
 * the universities and the general higher education, be it public or private, lack strategies to improve conditions for research.

Millennium Science Initiative
In 2007, the National Council for Science and Technology launched the Millennium Science Initiative (2007–2013), which was co-financed by the World Bank. At a time when the economy’s formal sector was expanding rapidly and real investment was rising sharply, the Council considered that continued economic progress would require more and better use of knowledge and more and better qualified human resources for science and technology. To correct these shortcomings, the Millennium Science Initiative established a funding facility and an outreach programme. The funding facility provided competitive grants through three windows: The Outreach Programme proposed a series of school visits by top scientists and researchers to change negative perceptions that deterred Ugandans from pursuing careers in science. A National Science Week was also established. In parallel, this second component sought to strengthen the institutional capacity of the National Council for Science and Technology and the Uganda Industrial Research Institute and, more generally, to improve policy implementation, evaluation and monitoring.
 * top-end research involving both senior researchers and graduate students;
 * the creation of undergraduate programmes in basic science and engineering; and
 * support for co-operation with the private sector, which consisted in company internships for students and grants for technology platforms through which firms and researchers could collaborate on solving problems of direct interest to industry.

Presidential Initiative on Science and Technology
In July 2010, the Presidential Initiative on Science and Technology offered a further boost by creating a fund to foster innovation at Makerere University over the next five years. When President Museveni visited Makerere University in December 2009, he noticed that many undergraduate students had produced interesting prototypes of machines and implements and that PhD students and senior researchers were working on inventions with potential for transforming rural Ugandan society but that innovation was being held back by the lack of modern research and teaching laboratories. After the visit, he decided to create a Presidential Innovations Fund endowed with UGX 25 billion (circa US$ 8.5 million) over five years to support innovationrelated projects at the university’s College of Engineering, Art, Design and Technology. The fund became operational in July 2010. It covered the cost of modernizing laboratories and the implementation of ten projects at the university. It also financed undergraduate science and engineering programmes, academia–private sector partnerships, student internships, science policy formulation and science popularization in schools and communities.

By 2014, the projects had developed:
 * an academic records management system;
 * more than 30 internet laboratories (ilabs) in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering;
 * a business incubator, the Centre for Technology Design and Development;
 * a Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation;
 * more than 30 innovation clusters for metal, salt, coffee, milk, pineapple, etc.;
 * appropriate irrigation;
 * a vehicle design project (the Kiira EV car), which evolved into the Centre for Research in Transportation Technologies;
 * makapads, the only sanitary wear for women in Africa made from natural materials (papyrus and paper), including for maternity use;
 * a Community Wireless Resource Centre.

Innovation hubs
Business incubation and innovation are being promoted by several Ugandan institutions, including the Uganda Industrial Research Institute and the Uganda Investment Authority. The latter is a parastatal agency which works in conjunction with the government to facilitate private sector investment. One of the authority’s most flourishing sectors is ICTs. This sector has seen major investment in recent years to develop Uganda’s backbone infrastructure network, which is comprised of fibre-optic cables and related equipment, as well as mobile broadband infrastructure.

Uganda has an innovation hub named Hive Colab, which was launched in 2010 by AfriLabs and is headed by Barbara Birungi. It serves as a collaborative space to facilitate interaction among technology entrepreneurs, web and mobile app developers, designers, investors, venture capitalists and donors. Hive Colab provides facilities, support and advice to members to help them launch successful start-up enterprises. The hub offers a virtual incubation platform that is intended to assist entrepreneurial activity, particularly in rural areas. Its three programme focus areas are ICTs and mobile technologies, climate technologies and agribusiness innovation.

Another incubator, the Consortium for enhancing University Responsiveness to Agribusiness Development Limited (CURAD), is a public–private partnership which targets young innovators in the agribusiness sector with the goal of generating new enterprises and employment. This non-profit company was launched in May 2014 and is based at Makerere University.

In September 2013, the government launched a Business Process Outsourcing Incubation Centre at the Uganda Bureau of Statistics House. The facility can accommodate 250 agents and is run by three private companies. The Government of Uganda has targeted this industry to address youth unemployment and stimulate investment in information-technology-enabled services.

Prizes
Since 2010, two annual prizes have incentivized innovation in Uganda. The first are the Community Innovations Awards, a competition for mobile apps that encourages university students to innovate in the areas of agriculture, health and education. Each year since 2012, Orange Uganda, a division of France Telecom, has sponsored this prize. Since 2010, the Uganda Communications Commission has also organized the Annual Communications Innovation Awards, which reward excellence in ICT innovation that contributes to national development goals. The prizes are awarded in several categories, including digital content, ICT for development, service excellence, business excellence and young ICT innovators.

Financial investment
Research funding climbed between 2008 and 2010 from 0.33% to 0.48% of GDP. The business enterprise sector’s share of research funding progressed from 4.3% to 13.7% over this period and spending on engineering from 9.8% to 12.2%, to the detriment of agricultural research, which shrank from 53.6% to 16.7% of total spending, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics.

Human capital
Enrolment in higher education rose from 93 000 to 140 000 between 2006 and 2011, in a context of strong population growth of 3.3% per year. In 2011, 4.4% of young Ugandans were enrolled at university.

The number of researchers has climbed steadily over the past decade, even doubling between 2008 and 2010 in head counts from 1 387 to 2 823, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. This represents a leap from 44 to 83 researchers per million inhabitants over the same period. One in four researchers is a woman.

Research output
The number of scientific publications tripled between 2005 and 2014 to 757 a year, according to Thomson Reuters' Web of Science (Science Citation Index Expanded). In 2014, Uganda had 19.5 publications per million inhabitants recorded in this international database. This places Uganda fifth in East and Central Africa for scientific output after Gabon, Cameroon, Kenya and the Republic of Congo.

Ugandan research focuses on life sciences. In 2014, the Uganda Industrial Research Institute was selected for a programme which is developing centres of excellence in biomedical sciences.

Kenya and South Africa count among Uganda’s top five research partners. Between 2008 and 2014, Uganda's main collaborators came from the United States (1,709 articles), United Kingdom (1,031 articles), Kenya (477 articles), South Africa (409 articles) and Sweden (311 articles).

Regional context
Uganda is a member of the East African Community (EAC), like Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania. The EAC's founding treaty of 1967 makes provision for co-operation among member states to develop science, technology and innovation. On 1 July 2010, the five EAC members formed a common market; the agreement provides for the free movement of goods, labour, services and capital. In 2014, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya agreed to adopt a single tourist visa. Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have also launched the East African Payment System.

The EAC Common Market Protocol (2010) makes provision for market-led research, technological development and the adaptation of technologies in the community, in order to support the sustainable production of goods and services and enhance international competitiveness. States are to collaborate with the East African Science and Technology Commission and other institutions to develop mechanisms for commercializing indigenous knowledge and ensuring intellectual property protection. Member states also undertake to establish a research and technological development fund for the purpose of implementing the provisions in the protocol. Other clauses include: On 30 November 2013, the EAC countries signed a Monetary Union Protocol with the aim of establishing a common currency within 10 years. On 10 June 2015, the EAC, Southern African Development Community and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) signed a Tripartite Free Trade Agreement. These agreements are part of a pan-African movement to create a free trade area and customs union in each regional economic community with a view to creating a pan-African Common Market by 2023 and an African Economic Community by 2028.
 * promoting linkages among industries and other economic sectors within the EAC community;
 * promoting industrial research and the transfer, acquisition, adaptation and development of modern technology;
 * promoting sustainable and balanced industrialization to cater for the least industrialized members;
 * facilitating the development of micro-, small and medium-sized (SME) enterprises and promoting
 * indigenous entrepreneurs; and
 * promoting knowledge-based industries.

Increasingly, regional economic communities are also driving regional scientific integration. The Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA) was formally integrated into the operational framework of the EAC by the East African Legislative Assembly in 2009 through the IUCEA Act. IUCEA has been entrusted with the mission of developing a Common Higher Education Area by 2015. In order to harmonize higher education systems in EAC countries, IUCEA established the East African Quality Assurance Network in 2011, which is in the process of developing a regional policy and an East African qualifications framework for higher education. IUCEA also established a partnership with the East African Business Council in 2011 to foster joint research and innovation by the private sector and universities and identify areas for curricular reform. The two partners organized the region’s first forum for academia and private firms under the auspices of the EAC in Arusha in 2012 and a second with the East African Development Bank in Nairobi in 2013.

Uganda is also a member of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, a regional economic community grouping Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan.

Uganda is one of a number of East and Central African countries that have entered into bilateral co-operation agreements with South Africa in science and technology. Since 2009, Uganda has been developing cooperation with South Africa in the fields of biosciences, space science and technology, mathematics, energy, environment, climate change and indigenous knowledge.