Makerere University

This, uh, group of exiles constituted a government, elected a president.

His name was Yusufu, Yusuf Lule, who was formerly the vice chancellor of Makerere University.

A man with very little political skill, uh, and little political attachment to ordinary Ugandans, who became the new president in April 1979 after the Tanzanians drove Amin out of power.

Uganda's government, uh, Amin's government did not fall as the result of a popular uprising.

Mungere.

So where did you do your, where did you study medicine? I was in Makerere in

the medical

school.

it like then?

It was exciting.

And you know, Makerere, we still believed it was one of the best medical schools.

One of the early medical schools and one of the best.

This wasn't about me passing.

Without this result, I would not have gone to Makerere University to meet Uncle Ben, to go to St. Francis, to do a five-year course so that someone handed over to me and to do that research which led to that gentleman asking me the question which led to the vision being born without this result.

[applause] It just occurred to me like, wait, this wasn't about passing all along.

This was about the ministry.

The last...

For the last three weeks, when I go to Makerere, I've been, I've been mad.

How do you stop me when I go to Makerere to preach the gospel? And they are telling me that I have to preach, I have to pay, pay Afro store.

When I stopped there at, at the gate, Christopher, Solomon and my wife are witnesses.

I tell them, they stop me, I stop.

I said, "Staff." I said, "Staff, pass." And I...

[cheers] [claps] Why? I am more staff in Makerere than the lecturers.

[cheers] [claps] I'm...

[upbeat music] Almost a decade ago, a group of researchers in Uganda began asking a simple question: What if Africa could build its own tools to measure the air Africans breathe? At the time, air quality monitors were expensive, hard to access, and largely designed and manufactured outside the continent, so they decided to build their own.

What started as a small research project at Makerere University has grown into Airco, an African air quality monitoring platform with sensors across cities on the continent, collecting data, building technology, and using artificial intelligence to understand and predict air pollution.

But getting there was anything but easy.

There were years of experimenting, finding parts, building prototypes, and eventually putting sensors on moving motorbikes to map pollution across cities.

I am your host, Michael Ashali.

[upbeat music] This week, we are going to Uganda to hear the story of Airco.

How did it begin? What did they discover? And after almost a decade, what does the future look like? My guest is Professor Engineer Bainomugisha, a professor of computer science at Makerere University and Project Lead at Airco.

He has been part of the journey from those early experiments to building one of Africa's most recognized air quality monitoring platforms.

No, no

... with the Makerere University of Kenya-

Oh, oh, oh, oh

... which it was it, Kisii to Uganda or Kenya or them.

He was, uh, of South African origin.

And, uh, he was working at Makerere, and he was saying, "Well, I'm looking for a teaching assistant," and not many people want to come to Uganda because, uh, Amin by then had carved this reputation of not being a very easy or very friendly person.

Mm-hmm.

So my parents were aghast.

It was the middle of the night.

I was the only one coming out at the old airport at that time.

There was a bus, East African Airways bus, that took me to Makerere in the middle of the night.

Wow.

Yeah.

This man sent me a very funny vision he had when we were in Makerere.

[cheers] He said, that was Friday, he said, "I just saw fire coming into your mouth, out of your mouth, came to our tent, and as soon as it hit our tent, a guy standing next to me went down," whoosh, "and just started screaming." I mean, I'm like, "God, does it have to be like that?" [laughs] One question, God.

Maybe He knows that guy, that's the only way He can- [laughs] Yeah, he's, some people are hard.

People were being slain at the gate, outside the gate.

Yeah, we had three overflows.

We had 1,000 people there, if you have been to Makerere.

[cheers] Since, but we had 1,000, don't ask me how we had 1,000 people.