Uganda launched a new national industrial policy designed to spur industrial development, economic transformation and guide its industrialization, employment, and wealth creation agenda in 2020. Technology continues to be the most useful resource for almost any industry to increase productivity and improve overall standard of living.

The policy seeks to lower the costs of industrial finance, foster industrial expansion, innovation, and infrastructure development. In a bid to achieve this, the government, through other partnerships with the Chinese government, has been able to secure large amounts of support for the Uganda Industrial Research Institute which is playing a big role is fostering the industrialization of Uganda through training budding engineers using state of the art technology and machinery.

Prof. Charles Kwesiga, the Executive Director of the Uganda Industrial Research Institute, recently told Nexus Media that Uganda can only achieve industrial expansion through the right technologies and innovations. He also realized the need to narrow the gap between training and production which is core in producing the right skills without affecting the chain of manufacture.

Under the stewardship of Prof. Kwesiga, UIRI, a government center of excellence based at the Namanve Industrial Park along Jinja Road, has remained critical to research to develop technologies and innovations that can promote value addition.

Eng. David Ilukol, the head of engineering at UIRI, said the center offers hands-on skills training in diverse areas such as food processing, laundry and cosmetics production, weaving and textiles, bamboo value addition, carpentry, metal fabrication, minerals, and material processing, among others, so as to promote value addition to our existing and abundant natural resources.

He said under the Meat Technology Section, the section heads the development of value-added meat products.

“This is done through training and the provision of technical advisory support services to the meat industry to improve the capacity and competence of indigenous meat processing enterprises,” said Eng. Ilukol.

Under the Dairy Technology Section, Ilukol said the center offers research and training that has since increased the production of skilled manpower, increased investment, job creation, reduced wastage of raw materials, and improved the safety, quality, and competitiveness of Uganda’s dairy products.

According to Eng. Ilukol, the Institute, through the Fruits and Vegetables Technology Department, has conducted several studies to promote industrialization through value addition to fruits and vegetables that resulted in the production of various products.

“The department works in collaboration with the laboratories at the Institute to ensure the production of safe and quality products that are fit for human consumption and meet consumer expectations,” said Ilukol.

UIRI is also in the final stage of rolling out the mass production of UV sterilizer to meet the need for the standardization of sanitary use for sterilizing sanitary pads for women.

“The question of healthy sanitary pads as the menstrual hygiene campaign wages on both nationally and internationally has been explored by UIRI through the development of a UV sterilizer prototype that has successfully been used to sterilize sanitary pads for women produced by the Paper Pilot Plant,” said Ilukol.

He noted that also under trial currently under the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADs) program is the moisture meter, which has been developed by UIRI to measure the amount of moisture in grains (coffee and maize).

Using research and innovation, UIRI has been able to acquire processing technology for the production of tooth picks and building a sport bike using the abundant Bamboo resources to produce a range of high value bamboo products including a bicycle, mats, textiles, carpets, floor boards, curtains, car seat covers, decorative ornaments. and.

This was successfully underscored in collaboration with the China Bamboo Research Centre (CBRC) that resulted into training staff in all aspects of bamboo value addition.

Uganda Industrial Research Institute is a competence and capability center that champions innovations, translates applied research results into practical applications that lead to high-quality, efficient industrial products and processes, and creates highly skilled human resources.