Makerere University Research and Innovations Fund (Mak-RIF) — Uganda's Government-Funded Knowledge-Transfer Pipeline

The Makerere University Research and Innovations Fund (Mak-RIF) is a Government of Uganda grants mechanism, launched in August 2019, that channels annual state appropriations directly into applied research and innovation at Makerere University. Administered through a Grants Management Committee, it funds research grants, PhD grants and — since December 2023 — dedicated commercialisation grants, explicitly targeting the pipeline from university research to marketable products, patents and industry or community adoption.

Over its first three financial years the Government of Uganda appropriated a cumulative UGX 79 billion to the fund, financing 775 projects. By FY2023/24, Makerere reported over 1,300 multidisciplinary awards made since inception, of which roughly half (666) had completed implementation, with at least 157 completed projects yielding a tangible product — from a portable weather-station network (30 units deployed nationally, feeding Uganda's National Meteorological Authority) to medical, food and engineering solutions. The first dedicated Commercialization Grant cohort, launched December 2023, funded 15 projects worth roughly UGX 2.08 billion. By April 2025, independent reporting in University World News described 560 projects as having developed market-ready products and noted university leadership's ambition — not yet achieved — to build a science and technology centre producing 500 start-up companies a year.

The fund's sustainability is fragile: it depends entirely on annual government appropriation, and in the 2024/25 budget cycle Uganda's Parliament cut Makerere's overall budget and nearly halved its development budget, prompting Vice Chancellor Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe to warn publicly that the cuts would 'cripple gains' in research and innovation and to confirm the university would reduce its own research funding as a result. Figures for total projects funded also vary somewhat across Makerere's own communications over time, a reporting inconsistency worth noting alongside the fund's genuine scale.

Read the full analysis: https://news.mak.ac.ug/2025/04/president-museveni-lauds-rif-progress-promises-more-funding/