Uganda has achieved a significant digital milestone by launching the National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Cloud, a high-performance computing hub meant to boost the country's AI capabilities.
This major infrastructure project intends to expedite AI research, development, and innovation by offering vast processing capacity and secure storage for training complicated datasets.
The programme is the outcome of a strategic partnership between Makerere University and the Research and Education Network for Uganda (RENU).
Operating with financial support from the Science, Technology and Innovation Secretariat under the Office of the President, the facility forms a core component of the AI Innovation Academy. Technical implementation is being spearheaded by Pathogen Economy Labs in partnership with Marconi Lab and the Mak AI Centre, stated RENU.
The physical infrastructure, provided by RENU, features high-specification servers equipped with GPUs specifically configured for data-driven research.
First beneficiaries of the rollout will be participants in the Innovation Academy, a programme that combines technical machine learning training with structured business incubation and investor-readiness support.
Students, professionals, and start-up founders will be selected through a rigorous national screening process.
Joyce Nakatumba Nabende, a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and head of the AI Lab at Makerere University, highlighted the necessity of this leap in local capacity.
“When we are doing AI innovations, there are three important pillars: the data needed to build the models, the compute and cloud or storage to run them, and the skilling. With the cloud launched in partnership with RENU, we are focusing on the key aspect of cloud and compute that is necessary for training models.”
She added: “The commissioning of the National AI Research Cloud is a major step toward strengthening Uganda’s innovation pipeline by giving creators the compute and dataset capacity needed to build, test, and improve real-world AI solutions.”
“By lowering the infrastructure barrier, this initiative is expected to help innovators move faster from prototypes to scalable products, catalyse stronger collaboration across the ecosystem, and accelerate AI-driven solutions that address national priorities,” concluded RENU.
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