The Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) received funding from the Government of Uganda through the Science, Technology, and Innovation Secretariat at the Office of the President (STI-OP) to implement the project “Commercialisation of Academic Research Initiative (CARI)”. CARI is funded under Grant Agreement Number STI-OP/2023/INDUSTRY4.0+/05 and implemented in partnership with Busitema University, Islamic University in Uganda, Makerere University, Mbarara University of Science and Technology, or Nkumba University.
The overall objective of CARI is to strengthen the capacity of Ugandan universities to create a critical mass of fourth-industrial revolution-based enterprises from student and faculty research to create jobs and wealth.
The specific objectives of CARI are:
CARI is therefore funded to mobilise universities in Uganda directly contribute to job and wealth creation by nurturing student and faculty research into enterprises which employ young people. CARI aims to address the graduate unemployment challenge in Uganda. It also aims to nurture Ugandan innovations to create new businesses or produce technologies that enhance the performance of the existing enterprises, starting with those in agri-food and education sectors.
Prototypes deploying Industry 4.0 technologies: CARI will support prototypes developed by university students and/or staff deploying Industry 4.0 technologies and applied in agri-food and Education. Prototypes designed with a combination of two or more of the following technologies addressing challenges in the agri-food and education sectors will be supported.
Prototypes developed and tested by a multi-disciplinary team: A clear demonstration that the prototype was developed and/or tested by a multidisciplinary team of young people from engineering, computing, and agri-food /education must be made. This team of three or more disciplines must be listed in the application with a specification of their roles and responsibilities in developing/refining the prototype. If already done, business experts engaged or to be engaged should be included as part of the team. The team must therefore be constituted by a minimum of four team members.
Prototypes technically validated by at least two senior specialists at the university: The prototypes presented must have been technically tested and recommended by two senior researchers in the two dominant fields for example an engineer and an agri-food systems expert or a computer scientist and an education expert. These two should provide recommendations for each submission as having technically reviewed and approved that it has technical potential to address the specified challenges in the agri-food or education sector.
Prototypes with potential to address challenges in the agri-food and education sectors: The submissions should specify the challenge faced by the agri-food and education sectors that the prototype will address as a business. Agri-food industry challenges should range from production to post harvest handling and processing or value addition while the education sector challenges should be across the educational value chain from primary to tertiary institutions.
A total of five (5) prototypes will be funded, one from each from Busitema University, Islamic University in Uganda, Makerere University, Mbarara University of Science and Technology, and Nkumba University.
Three levels of support will be provided by CARI. First, technical mentorship will be provided by a group of experts from the core technical fields upon which the prototypes are designed. Secondly, basic financial support of up to 40 million Uganda Shillings Only will be provided to the prototypes to procure the required equipment to refine the prototypes. Thirdly, business development support including but not limited to company registration, business strategy development, resource mobilisation and market expansion.
After submission, a preliminary assessment will be done at RUFORUM Secretariat based on the criteria set in section 7 below. A short list of the applications that meet the criteria will be assigned to at least two reviewers. To avoid conflict of interest, the reviews will not be from the university of the applicant. A report for each of the reviewers will be compiled and based on the scores, a ranking of the applications will be prepared. A short list of 20 applicants will be invited to present their protypes and business cases and five best prototypes will be selected by a panel of judges. A selection meeting to choose one prototype from each of the five universities will be done. The selected prototypes will be onboarded to the RUFORUM SMEHub for mentorship and business growth.
Applications will be evaluated based on the criteria below.
No |
Criteria |
Score |
1) |
Clarity of the agri-food and education sector issue to be addressed: The application should specify the challenge to be addressed and how the prototype intends to address this challenge. This should include potential economic and other benefits of addressing the problem for example, reduce the work hours from 4 to 2, reduce time of production by 10 hours. |
10 |
2) |
Proof of demand for such a technology by end-users: Based on the importance of the problem, the applications will be scored based on the proof of demand by farmers, students and teachers, industries, transporters, consumers etc. This is important for business feasibility. |
10 |
3) |
Technical feasibility: the applicants should make clear, the scientific soundness of the prototype and its technical feasibility when produced in large scale. Applications will also be evaluated based on their technical capability to address the agri-food or education sector challenges in a short time possible with a relatively low cost. |
30 |
4) |
Business case for the prototypes: Applications will be assessed for the feasibility of its business model, estimates of revenue generated and share of the Ugandan and regional market it can claim. |
20 |
5) |
Budget feasibility and alignment to technical and business case. The budget proposed by each applicant should be aligned to technical and business case. It should also be feasible to be used in a period of one year . |
5 |
6) |
Knowledge of other actors in the sector who will be engaged to refine the prototype and grow the business. |
10 |
7) |
Team composition: The team members fronted should be at least four. Two being engineering and ICT, the other two being agri-food experts and a businessperson. |
5 |
8) |
Potential to employ many young people from diverse expertise. Each application will be assessed and ranked based on its potential to employ a large group of young people with diverse expertise within and beyond those of the group members who participated in the development of the prototype. |
10 |
|
Total score |
100 |
The following tentative timeframe will be followed. However, this time frame may change based on the number of applications received.
Contact persons in case of inquiries
For further inquiries, please contact the following persons;
For further inquiries, please contact the following persons;
Kindly download the budget template here: https://ruforum.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/copy-of-ruforum-cari-budget_template.xls
[1] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-are-industry-4-0-the-fourth-industrial-revolution-and-4ir
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/09/02/what-is-industry-4-0-heres-a-super-easy-explanation-for-anyone/?sh=aad829a9788a