The Makerere-Sweden bilateral collaborative research program has been the largest so far at Makerere University. The program is coordinated by the Directorate of Research and Graduate Training (DR>) since inception in 2000 and has so been implemented in four phases so far.
The planning phase of the bilateral research support program was in 2000-2001 and the Swedish Government supported Makerere University to a tune of SEK 15.0 million.
This was followed by the four funding phases:
- Phase I of the research agreement was implemented from 2002-2005 for a total research support of SEK 104.1 million.
- Phase II (2006-2009) was supported with SEK 181.0 million
- Phase III from (2010-2014 SEK 181.0 million
- Prolongation period of Phase III (July 2014 –Oct 2015) to a tune of SEK 34.1 million
- Phase IV from 2015-2020 to a tune of SEK 275 Million
A total of SEK 790.2 million will have spent on research support to Makerere and Uganda public universities by end of June, 2020.
The research support has led to tremendous achievements in capacity development and research outputs and impacts within and without the university. The Makerere Program, has been looked at and show cased as a success story by the Swedish research supporting institutions at all times.
In addition, support in this phase is towards: Strengthening research capacity in other public universities in the country to compete in the knowledge generation arena through training at PhD and Masters level, provide funds for competitive research grants to postdoctoral students, and the development of a regional network among universities in Africa that have benefitted from the government of Sweden research support similar to Makerere University.
Within this phase, the overall policy guidance is provided by a Steering Committee. Unlike in previous phases and to ensure more efficiency and effectiveness, the membership on the steering committee is drawn from within and without Makerere University.
