Makerere AI Lab
Mak-AI is the AI and data science research centre at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, building open-source AI tools and datasets for healthcare, agriculture, African-language NLP, and climate applications across Sub-Saharan Africa. It is grant-funded, led by Principal Investigator Dr. Joyce Nabende, and partners with Google, Gates Foundation, IDRC, and FCDO.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2009
- HeadquartersMakerere, Uganda
- Headcount11–50
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingServices
What Makerere AI Lab does
Makerere AI Lab (Mak-AI), the legal entity Makerere University Centre for Artificial Intelligence, is an AI and data science research centre embedded in the Faculty of IT and Computing at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. Founded in 2009, the lab operates across four research pillars: AI in Healthcare (TB chest X-ray interpretation via the PaliGemma-CXR multi-task model, maternal health, mental health call-centre analysis with Butabika Hospital), AI in Agriculture (crop disease diagnosis for cassava, maize, beans, and sweet potato, plus crop phenotyping with NaCRRI and IITA), Natural Language Processing for African languages (ASR, TTS, machine translation, and misinformation detection for Luganda, Acholi, Lumasaaba, Swahili, Runyankole, and others), and AI for Environment and Climate Action (air quality monitoring, greenhouse gas emissions tracking). Notable technical outputs include the 155-hour Makerere Radio Speech Corpus (first publicly available radio dataset in sub-Saharan Africa), 100,000+ sentence monolingual corpora for four East African languages, the Sunflower multilingual LLM co-developed with Sunbird AI, and 50+ peer-reviewed publications in venues including BMC Artificial Intelligence, Nature Communications, IEEE Access, and ACM Computing Surveys.
Mak-AI does not sell commercial products or services; all datasets, models, and publications are released as open-source outputs distributed via Harvard Dataverse, Mendeley, Zenodo, and academic journals. Its operating model is community-led and grant-funded, with go-to-market executed through research collaborations, academic partnerships, and outreach to government, development, and civil-society stakeholders. Confirmed funding partners include Google ($3M in September 2023), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, IDRC (Canada), FCDO (UK), and Lacuna Fund. Headcount is approximately 8 core researchers (led by Principal Investigator Dr. Joyce Nabende) plus 11 PhD and MSc students, with broader operating geographies spanning 8 African countries.
In 2024 the lab expanded into the Mak-CAD (Centre for AI and Data Science) initiative, and in 2025 it co-hosted the AI for African Languages Conference, secured two Google PhD Fellowships, co-launched the Sunflower LLM, and saw Dr. Nabende appointed Lead National Expert for Uganda's UNESCO AI Readiness Assessment — collectively marking a transition from a purely academic research unit to a nationally anchored AI ecosystem hub.
Makerere AI Lab firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Makerere AI Lab
- Legal name
- Makerere University Centre for Artificial Intelligence
- Website
- https://air.ug
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2009
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 11–50 employees
- Short description
- Mak-AI is the AI and data science research centre at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, building open-source AI tools and datasets for healthcare, agriculture, African-language NLP, and climate applications across Sub-Saharan Africa. It is grant-funded, led by Principal Investigator Dr. Joyce Nabende, and partners with Google, Gates Foundation, IDRC, and FCDO.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Makerere AI Lab industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Academic AI Research Services
- SIC
- Services-Commercial Physical & Biological Research (8731)
- akta.pro primary industry
- AI/ML Engineering & Model Development Services (BPAEAHAF)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- Data Science, Machine Learning & AI (Modeling, MLOps, GenAI) (EDABAFAE), AI Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) Platforms (HDAAAMAA)
Keywords
Where Makerere AI Lab is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Makerere
- HQ country
- Uganda
- HQ region
- Africa
Offices1 record
Markets served
Makerere AI Lab business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Services
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Operations
Revenue model
- Research Grants and Funding: As an academic research center, Mak-AI operates entirely on grant funding from international development organizations, governments, and foundations. Revenue is received as research grants for specific AI4D projects with no commercial revenue generation.
Go-to-market motion1 record
Distribution channels3 records
Marketing channels5 records
Makerere AI Lab product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Makerere AI Lab (Mak-AI) is an academic AI and data science research center at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. It conducts applied AI research across four pillars: AI in Healthcare (disease diagnosis, mental health), AI in Agriculture (crop disease, phenotyping), AI for Language Technologies (NLP, ASR, TTS for African languages), and AI for Environment and Climate. The center produces peer-reviewed publications, open-source datasets, and pre-trained models, delivering all research output through grant-funded academic partnerships rather than commercial sales.
Product overview
Makerere AI Lab (Mak-AI) is an academic AI and data science research center at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. The organization operates as a unified research center rather than a commercial product company. Its portfolio consists of four interconnected research pillars: AI in Healthcare (disease diagnosis, mental health), AI in Agriculture (crop disease detection, phenotyping), AI for Language Technologies (NLP, ASR, TTS for African languages), and AI for Environment/Climate. Supporting infrastructure includes curated AI-ready datasets across agriculture, health, and language domains, plus peer-reviewed publications. The lab also runs internship and graduate training programs (MSc/PhD) and collaborates with international funders including IDRC, FCDO, Gates Foundation, and Lacuna Fund.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- AI for Health: Research theme focused on developing AI tools for disease diagnosis, maternal health, and tuberculosis screening
- AI for Language Technologies
- AI in Agriculture
- AI-ready Datasets
Products and services
- AI-Ready Datasets Curated open-source datasets released by Mak-AI for AI model development across agriculture (cassava, maize, beans, sweet potato, coffee, cashew), healthcare (TB chest X-rays, malaria imaging), and African language technology (speech corpora, monolingual and parallel text corpora for Luganda, Acholi, Lumasaba, Kiswahili, and others). Datasets are made publicly available via Harvard Dataverse, Mendeley, and Zenodo for use by researchers and practitioners worldwide.
Quantifiable outcome
- 90.32% accuracy on TB diagnosis using PaliGemma-CXR multi-task model
- +4 more outcomes
Companies that use Makerere AI Lab
Customer profileNamed customers1 record
Segments5 records
Ideal customer profiles3 records
Makerere AI Lab technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
AI capability12 records
Feature9 records
Makerere AI Lab partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
17 partnerships are on record, tiered flagship, core and minor.
- Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST)flagshipCo-host of the 2025 AI for African Languages Conference. Key partner in language technology research and development in Uganda.
- Marconi Research and Innovation LabcoreCollaborator on language technology projects including development of monolingual corpora for African languages, NLP research, and dataset creation.
- AI4D (AI for Development)coreNetwork supporting AI research and capacity building for development in Africa. Mak-AI is part of the AI4D consortium advancing AI4D across the continent.
- African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC)corePartner in the Data Science Without Borders project, contributing to capacity building and no-code platform development for data science applications.
- London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)coreInternational academic partner in Data Science Without Borders project, providing expertise in health data science and research methodology.
- Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI)corePartner in the Hash Hub for AI in Sexual, Reproductive and Maternal Health, providing clinical expertise and research translation support.
- Sunbird AIflagshipCollaboration on language technology and AI applications; jointly hosting AI for African Languages Conference 2025 and supporting national AI initiatives.
- Butabika HospitalcoreMental health facility providing anonymized call recordings for training AI systems to detect depression and suicidal ideation in local languages.
- National Crops Resources Research Institute (NaCRRI)coreUganda's national agricultural research institute collaborating on crop disease datasets, cassava spectral data, and agricultural AI applications.
- National Coffee Research Institute, UgandacorePartner in crop classification dataset development including coffee and cashew datasets using drone imagery.
- International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA)coreInternational agricultural research institute collaborating on cassava breeding AI tools and next-generation breeding Phase 2 project.
- Cornell UniversitycoreAcademic partner in cassava breeding research providing expertise and collaboration on machine learning tools for cassava trait measurement.
- Mozilla FoundationcoreCollaborates on Common Voice platform for building Luganda speech datasets; supports crowdsourced speech and text data collection for low-resource languages.
- Ministry of ICT and National Guidance, UgandaflagshipGovernment ministry leading national AI strategy development; Dr. Joyce Nabende appointed as Lead National Expert for UNESCO AI Readiness Assessment.
- Gudie FarmsminorAgricultural partner for ChatGPT cross-lingual advisory project, providing farmer-specific datasets and agricultural expertise.
- Data Science AfricacoreRegional network supporting data science and AI research and development across African communities.
- DSI AfricacoreNetwork advancing data science and AI research across African institutions, supporting continental collaboration.
Scale indicators6 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Makerere AI Lab competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- GhanaNLP: Ghanaian open-source NLP community building Twi, Ga, and other Ghanaian language models and datasets. Directly comparable peer based on the same open, low-resource African language NLP thesis and community-led research model.
- Sunbird AI: Ugandan AI lab building African-language NLP and co-host of AI for African Languages Conference 2025. Most directly comparable to Makerere AI Lab because both operate in Uganda with similar African-language, applied AI focus and overlapping founding-era teams.
- Masakhane: Pan-African grassroots NLP community for African languages, coordinating volunteer research on low-resource language machine translation and ASR. Directly comparable because it targets the same low-resource African language space as Mak-AI's NLP research and shares contributors.
- Marconi Research and Innovation Lab: Italian-American NLP research lab collaborating with Mak-AI on multilingual corpora for African languages. Closely comparable through joint dataset and language-model publications in the same low-resource African language research domain.
- Data Science Africa: Pan-African network of data science and ML researchers running workshops, summer schools, and applied projects. Comparable as a sister organization that hosts and trains African ML talent and channels researchers into Mak-AI-adjacent applied projects.
Broad incumbents
- AI4D Africa: Multi-funder AI for Development program coordinating African AI labs including Mak-AI. Comparable as a coordinating funder-network whose grant architecture shapes Mak-AI's research scope and as a broader umbrella in the same AI4D space.
- DeepMind Africa Initiatives: DeepMind's Africa research presence and African-language AI efforts. Comparable as a much larger incumbent entering the same low-resource African language and applied health/agriculture AI space.
Others
- Mozilla Common Voice: Global crowdsourced speech-data platform that Mak-AI uses to build Luganda and other African language speech corpora. Comparable as adjacent enabling infrastructure that supports Mak-AI's ASR data pipeline.
Emerging players
- INRIA Pan-African AI Research Activities: French national AI research institute with growing partnerships in African AI labs. Comparable as a well-funded public research institute whose African-language and applied AI projects may overlap with Mak-AI's research focus.
Regional players
- African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS): Pan-African network of centers of excellence for mathematical and data science training across Africa. Comparable as a regional talent and applied research institution producing African data scientists in overlapping thematic areas.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat4 records
Key risks5 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Makerere AI Lab social profiles
Digital presenceMakerere AI Lab financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Makerere AI Lab leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles4 records
Makerere AI Lab funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds1 record
Investors1 record
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Makerere AI Lab M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Makerere AI Lab
What does Makerere AI Lab do?
Makerere AI Lab (Mak-AI) is an academic AI and data science research center at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. It conducts applied AI research across four pillars: AI in Healthcare (disease diagnosis, mental health), AI in Agriculture (crop disease, phenotyping), AI for Language Technologies (NLP, ASR, TTS for African languages), and AI for Environment and Climate. The center produces peer-reviewed publications, open-source datasets, and pre-trained models, delivering all research output through grant-funded academic partnerships rather than commercial sales.
Is Makerere AI Lab a public or private company?
Makerere AI Lab is a private company. It is classified as state government owned and is currently operating.
When was Makerere AI Lab founded?
Makerere AI Lab was founded in 2009. It employs 11 to 50 people.
Where is Makerere AI Lab based?
Makerere AI Lab is headquartered in Makerere, Uganda, in the Africa region.
How does Makerere AI Lab make money?
One revenue line is on record: research Grants and Funding.
Who are Makerere AI Lab's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are GhanaNLP, Sunbird AI, Masakhane, Marconi Research and Innovation Lab and Data Science Africa. Broad incumbents are AI4D Africa and DeepMind Africa Initiatives. Mozilla Common Voice is listed as an others. INRIA Pan-African AI Research Activities is listed as an emerging player. African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) is listed as a regional player.
Does Makerere AI Lab have an API?
No public API is recorded for Makerere AI Lab.
What industry is Makerere AI Lab in?
Makerere AI Lab's product category is Academic AI Research Services. Its primary akta.pro industry code is BPAEAHAF, AI/ML Engineering & Model Development Services, with a secondary code of EDABAFAE, Data Science, Machine Learning & AI (Modeling, MLOps, GenAI). Its SIC code is 8731.