Faculty of Computing & IT Blog

A thief was arrested for stealing property from Makerere University faculty of Computing and Informatics Technology. Opata Ronald, a resident of old Kampala has been frequenting the faculty to steal laptops and students bags during examination time and lecture periods.
Opata set out to steal more laptops at the faculty of Computing and Informatics technology during the riots at Makerere University on Tuesday 16th March, since many students had left the University for Safety Reasons. He was however being watched on the faculty’s CCTV camera’s, which had recorded him several times and security was alert waiting for him to turn up again.
In his possession, was a book of contacts and several student identity cards, believed to have been accumulated from the stolen bags. But Opata alleged to be dealing with students from the faculty, who tip him off when to come and steal, and give him 2,000 shillings only, after the mission.
But one of the students he claims to be an accomplice was contacted and it was discovered that this student had also fallen a victim of Opata’s theft. It is not known how much Opata has stolen from the faculty, since he has been a weekly visitor for about a year.
The faculty head of Corporate Relations, Michael Niyitegeka is optimistic that the law will take its course over Opata’s issue, and was grateful that the faculty had installed CCTV camera’s to help in the identification of wrong doers.
Opata has been handed over to the police as investigations continue.

“We have problems in collecting data on farmers one by one. By the time you get to the last farmer, things have changed. It is cumbersome; it takes a lot of time. We are here to get the solution” those were the words of Bernard Tayebwa, the Agribusiness manager of Uganda Co-operative Alliance on the 15th February while meeting some of the staff members at CIT.
The meeting was under the Mobile Innovations and Enterprise project, which focuses on coming up with mobile solutions to solve paradoxes.
CIT was asked to come up with a mobile solution that can be used to support rural farmers in Kayunga district in the better management of their produce and devise a means of communicating to farmers about how to export their produce in time, safe guarding their crops from crop diseases, and accurate collection of data on productivity in terms of produce per acreage.
Uganda Corporative Alliance is an umbrella organization of cooperative organizations registered in 1961, to promote the economic and social interests of cooperatives in Uganda. It was formed for the purposes of promoting, advocating and building the capacities of all types of co-operatives in the country (primary societies, district and national unions.
“As a faculty, we are more than willing to be of help. Being approached by various sectors implies that we are engaging in more community outreach and more collaborations. In a way, we are contributing to the bigger government programmes of the Millennium Development Goals and Bonna bagagawale,’ explained a smiling Dr. Kanagwa .
The faculty is yet to finalise a Memorandum of Understanding with Uganda Corporative alliance, to streamline the operation.
This is not the first call for a solution from CIT. The faculty has been approached by several institutions

The Deputy Dean in charge of Academic Affairs, Dr. Idris Rai, has revealed that CIT is to stop using laptops and desktop computers for lecturing, in favour of the more effective tablet PC. Dr. Rai made this revelation during a training workshop organized under the hp network project for CIT academic staff, on how to use tablet PCs in teaching and learning.
“Technology has enabled changes in time from black boards with chalk, to white boards with pens, computers came and allowed for power point presentations – which did not eliminate the white board. But the tablet Pc has eliminated the white boards and allows you to interact with the content and with students, and also allows for recording of the activities. So the future is bright, it is about better learning,” he stressed.
Other advantages of the tablet PC include the fact that it eliminates the need for a whiteboard, there is no need for hard copies to comment on student reports, it allows one-to-many interactions and therefore allows for efficient sharing of information.
The faculty has twenty tablet PCs for now, but more will be needed as more of the academic staff adapt to this state of the art technology.
Academic staff who attended the workshop on the use of tablet PCs recommend that this should be the teaching tool used across the board.
“From what I have seen, I recommend that all staff members should get tablet PCs’” asserted Earnest Mwebaze the Assistant Head of IT Department.
“The fact that I can write on this thing is amazing. I can even sketch! How interesting!” exclaimed an excited Evelyn Kalenzi.
“The annotation part is the most interesting. It makes it possible to highlight some parts when teaching,” said a jovial Innocent Ndibatya.
“My concern is mobility in class. Iam yet to understand how that can be achieved,” wondered Richard Mayanja, an Assistant Lecturer.
At the end of the workshop, Arinaitwe Irene, Muwongwe Bernard, Namisanvu Rashida , and Ruth Mbabazi, were given tablet PCs, to use in teaching. The criteria was based on attendance of workshops, ability to use tablet PCs for teaching, a student evaluation survey on whether the actual tools are used by a lecturer.
In the late 1980s, early pen computer systems generated a lot of excitement and there was a time when it was thought they might eventually replace conventional computers with key boards.
Pen computers, as envisioned in the 1980s, were built around handwriting recognition. In the early 1980s, handwriting recognition was seen as an important future technology.

On the 26th of February, all roads led to the Large Lecture Theater 3 (LLT 3) Block B, to attend the re-launched mentor series. Students and staff members alike, filled the seats to listen in to the speaker of the day, The CEO of New Vision , Robert Kabushenga. He indeed met their expectations as he skillfully took them through how he has managed to get to where he is today, from a humble background, having been raised by a single parent. Kabushenga emphasized the need for students to stay focused on their studies, have good work etiquette, and avoid negative thinking. Below is a section of his speech.
“Be humble in your willingness to learn. You may have all the degrees but if you have a very bad work ethic, u can not be in office when you are required to be, you are totally useless to me. They say you’d rather hire somebody with low qualifications and a good work ethic, than somebody with high qualifications and good skills, but a bad work ethic.
Be creative, no one will teach you that in class. What the university gives you is basic: qualification and skills, the rest is up to you. You should strive in your work to be creative because that is what earns you. Your product will be seen. Focus on getting the job done. The business of living life is so urgent that there is no time to waste. So, focus on the things that matter in your lives. To the young ladies, do not let these boys waste your time. There is course work to be done, there are classes to be attended, time is the only resource in the world that you can never borrow. A day has only 24 hours. On that note, do not over sleep. Why should you sleep beyond 4:30am? By the time you wake up, at about 7:00am, a woman in Owino has already made three hundred thousand.
But you need academic excellence in order to be considered for the job. If you are dedicated towards achieving academic excellence, it trains you to achieve excellence everywhere else in life. I have personal experiences on that. Every time I worked hard, I excelled, every time I have chosen to relax, I failed badly. The only reason I got a pass degree from the faculty of law, is because I spent the last one and a half years of my degree between a night club called Pulsations and another one called Angenoir. Take your academics seriously. You have t o be smart, have good judgment, maturity, discipline, self belief, and self confidence.
It is also important for you to keep in good physical and mental health. Exercise regularly, read widely. Do not entertain people who are negative in your life, they will bring you down.
Lastly, build and invest in a reputation and do not squander it. Do not stagger blindly into adulthood, have role modals who you look up to for inspiration. Have humility in success, when you fail have the courage to pick yourself up, pay your dues, earn your pay, there are no short cuts, no luck, life is a straight scientific process, you will have to go through it all, even death. Do not gamble.” Robert kabushenga

This year was awash with news that Makerere University had topped the East and Central region in the latest rankings. The University was in the 15th position in the whole of Africa, with South Africa and Egypt taking the lead.
Web rankings follow increase in research publications on the web. Much as the entire university plus its academic and non-academic units have been congratulated for the work well done, it is time to put a few facts in the limelight!
Top in the rank is dspace, which is the Makerere University repository. Both the academic and non-academic units contribute to dspace, and the large volumes sent here partly explain how the university got to the top.
The rankings promote web publication by the different universities on the continent. The primary target of the rankings is to support electronic access to scientific publications and to other academic material.
In an earlier interview however, the Acting Vice Chancellor of Makerere University, Prof. Venansius Baryamureeba, indicated that he was not happy with the university performance.
“The performance shows that we have put more of our publications on the web, but Iam not impressed. As Makerere, we should be in the top ten universities on the continent. Our target is to be the Harvard of Africa. There is room for improvement,’’ he asserted.
Below is a quick analysis of the top ten and bottom ten academic units.
The faculty of Computing and Informatics Technology, CIT, takes lead. CIT beat all the other faculties and has 160 scholarly articles. A further analysis indicates that this faculty had 40, 298 hits, 139,527 Page views and was visited by 145 Countries/Territories including Kenya, USA, TZ, SA, NL, and Rwanda.
Established in 2005, CIT has positioned itself as a centre of excellence and is the largest ICT training centre in the sub-Saharan region.
This was followed by the college of Medicine with about 80 scholarly materials, Faculty of Forestry and natural Conservation with 74 scholarly items, Faculty of Science 61, Faculty of Technology 9, Faculty of Economics and Management, Faculty of Social Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture, Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Makerere university Institute of Social Research.
In descending order is the Gender mainstreaming division, Department of Women and gender studies, Department of distance learning, Institute of Adult and Continuing education, the department of Finance, Makerere Peace and Conflict Studies Programme, East African Institute of Higher Education Studies and Development, department of Physics, Department of Math, Geography department.
The End User support Manager with the Directorate of ICT Support (DICTS) Makerere University, Ali Ndiwalana, says “using the web metrics measures provides only one side of the coin. A number of interesting observations also emerge when you look at the visitor-patterns to the various unit websites. For example, despite having very few pages, the Academic registrar’s website (ar.mak.ac.ug) generates far more visits than even the primary University website (www.mak.ac.ug). We need to leverage this opportunity as a university to capture and direct this attention towards where we want it.’’
‘’Some non-academic units like the University hospital (hospital.mak.ac.ug) and the building unit (mubu.mak.ac.ug) also generate lots of traffic. This is an indication that users sometimes look for information about various services online and we need to put more effort in providing the right information and figure out new ways to engage these visitors,” he adds.

Other non-academic units that have greatly contributed include Makerere University Library, alumni, East African school of library and information science, and the human rights and peace centre among others.

It still remains a challenge for Makerere University to actively engage their works and research publications of the web.

The best two students from the concluded African Social Entrepreneurship Competition, ASEC, were from the Faculty of Computing and Informatics Technology. The students submitted two projects, one on mobile money transfer and the other on Mobi-drugs.

The winning project on mobile money transfer attracted a cash prize of Euros 500. This project was designed by Roy Gakoo a computer Science student, who focused on transferring money across borders. His project will see money transferred with the help of phones throughout East Africa for the start.

‘This project aims at eliminating the high costs charged to parents and students by western union and money gram services. Students are the major customer because they receive large amount of cash in form of fees and pocket money. Since we have set a charge fee of 3.5% of the amount, we intend to reduce it to a much lower rate so that so as to attract more customers and to make them feel comfortable,’ says Roy.

Roy has since started a firm, Qute solutions to roll out the project. He is working on the project with two other colleagues, Joanes Ngayuwha and Jackline Omare.

The Second project designed by Joseph Kizzi and Sanyu Nalunga, aims at making drug information easily accessible to people by phone sms.

‘Lack of knowledge on drug dosages and drug interactions explains why people suffer from drug poisoning. The solution is to provide information via the easily accessible sms, in a language the user understands best. 500 drug related cases are reported every month, and this is what we want to address,’ asserts Joseph.

The Deputy Dean in charge of Graduate studies, Dr. Jude Lubega, commended the students for their initiatives and encouraged other students to apply classroom knowledge to benefit society.

The competition attracted over one hundred students across Africa from Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, South Africa and Ghana. One of the project coordinators, Amol, revealed that 14million shillings is to be invested in the ICT sector, as a way of encouraging innovativeness.

CIT launched its OpenXdata software to 50 schools in Mbale and 50 schools in Kiboga district on 28^th Jan 2010. The OpenXdata platform will be used by these schools in recording data on pupil attendance using mobile phones. The Netherlands Development Organization, SNV, in collaboration with Makerere University Faculty of Computing and IT (CIT) availed the schools with Nokia phones to kick start the process, under the ‘CU@school project’.

Under the Department of innovation and Software development (DSID), CIT was charged with developing, deploying and training head teachers on how to use the software. An advance team from DISD trained head teachers in these schools on how to use the OpenXdata platform and they in turn will teach fellow teachers.

“It’s a typical application of OpenXdata in education to monitor school activities. Our motto is any data, any device, anywhere, anytime,’ said Peter Wakholi, the Assistant Head, DSID.

“It shows our relevance to the country and also in improving skills of CIT students. We are not staying at the faculty but are innovating to help society,’’ he added.

A baseline survey done by the ‘CU@ school project,’ reveals that it has been difficult to track down teachers who absent themselves from school because of the poor method of data collection.

The study reveals that the teacher-pupil absenteeism in primary schools is between 20 – 30%. On average, 12 billion Uganda shillings is lost annually in paying teachers on the payroll, who do not deliver.

OpenXdata will allow for weekly collection of data as opposed to the ongoing monthly data collection. The District Education Officer of Mbale, Mike Masikye Nangosya is optimistic that the education Ministry will pick up this initiative and use the software in all primary school across the country.

CIT has topped last year’s list as ICT Training Institution of the year according to Uganda ICT forum. The winners were announced on 27th Jan.2010.

The faculty Dean, Prof. Venansius Baryamureeba, scooped best ICT man of the year, while top ICT woman of the year is Dr. Dorothy Okello, from Technology.

‘We are going to continue doing well. It is important that the faculty keeps up the team spirit,’ said Prof. Barya.

Other categories include top ICT solutions developer of the year award, taken by Comtel Integrators Africa Ltd, Bank of the year embracing ICT is Standard Chartered Bank, and WBS TV, comes off as top media company of the year promoting ICT.

The Awards recognize excellence of best performing and innovative Individuals, Companies, Organizations, and institutions in promoting, applying and developing Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in the Country.

Uganda ICT Forum was established in 2006 to promote use of ICTs in all sectors of the economy.

CIT emerged first runner up in the 2009 ICT Expo awards. The awards, held at Kampala’s Golf course hotel, attracted Information and Communication Technology (ICT) giants in the country. As a prize, it is entitled to a 25minute talk show on NBS television.

Orange telecom, a new telecommunications company in the country, emerged overall winner and the Uganda judiciary took the 2^nd runner up position.

The faculty also emerged best under the Innovations and Creativity category.

The ICT Expo brings together all major ICT players in the country to showcase their products and services. It is an event for the entire Computer, Electronics, ICT, Satellite Broadband & Telecom industry and offers a platform to network with industry professionals, improve customer relations and demonstrate the latest technology.

Other companies that participated include Simba Telecom, Raps Uganda, UBC and Logix technical solutions.

Uganda’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has registered double digit growth since 2000 and grew by 33% in 2006/2007. The ICT sector has made communication easy for businesses by reducing the costs of doing business.

CIT has positioned itself as a centre of excellence and graduates thousands of professionals to work and fill the gap in the country’s growing ICT industry.

Academic programmes from CIT, Information Technology and Computer Science, will be offered in Makerere University upcountry campuses in Jinja and Fort Portal.

The Acting Vice Chancellor and Dean CIT, Prof. Venansius Baraymureeba, says it will be cheaper for students to access high quality but low cost education under this system. The explanation is that the cost of living upcountry is lower and therefore more affordable compared to the city.

“Students from the different campuses will be more relevant to the needs of their immediate communities, as they pursue further studies,’ he adds.

Students studying in these campuses will be awarded degrees equivalent to Makerere University main campus degrees.

The initial study centers will be in Jinja and Fort portal and are expected to admit 1000 students in the first year and grow each year. The study centers will start operations in February 2010.

They will also absorb the ever increasing number of students from the government system of Universal Secondary Education.

Before 1970, Makerere University, the oldest in the region, had three campuses in Kampala, Nairobi and Dar-es Salaam. The Kampala campus became independent after 1970 and has remained so till now, when it has opted to have upcountry campuses.