Kampala International University is setting a pace in delivering world class education as seen in its recent achievements.
As it held its 22nd graduation, it made history by holding it entirely online becoming one of the very few universities to have achieved this.
This according to Dr Muhammad Mpezamihigo was achieved through, “using online resources and re-tooling the academic and research staff for online delivery, research and innovations.”
These resources have helped the university stay on schedule with the academic syllabus throughout the Coronavirus pandemic lockdown since March 2020.
This resilience saw the university recently being ranked by a webometrics ranking world universities as the number private university in Uganda and East Africa, and the 3rd overall best university in Uganda only behind Makerere University and Mbarara University of Science and Technology.
In fact, Mpezamihigo added that inspite of the fact that access to internet, gadgets and data to access online services is not an easy fit for many students, the university has seen the percentage of uptake by students and staff increased from below 30% to well over 70%.
This is true as the Vice Chancellor noted that “as we speak, the percentage has even increased and we are now facing serious demand from out students and staff to upgrade our infrastructure in order for us to be able to deliver even better services.”
The university also has a robust Teaching and Research Hospital  at the Western Campus that according to Mpezamihigo, “remains among the top 10 and competitive general hospitals in the country, and has been gazetted to handle any cases of Covid-19 Pandemic, in collaboration with the MOH and the Bushenyi District, Uganda, Task Force against Covid-19.”
To top this, the university is currently involved in “undertaking more than 23 research projects related to the Covid-19 Pandemic, which makes KIU senior academics and researchers relevant to the current pandemic situation,” says the Vice Chancellor.
Furthermore, KIU in conjunction with other partners across Africa in s Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Netherlands and Tunisia installed the first global Fair Data point (FDP) successfully to assist in data collection  to understand patterns of disease outbreak using patient data.
This it did under the VODAN (Virus Outbreak Data Network) Africa Project, which it currently chairs. The objectives of this data collection is, “to verify it, in order to make it Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-usable,” says the Vice Chancellor.
All this is geared towards making KIU a world class research institution as also seen in its recent appointment of their new Chancellor, Prof Mahmood Mamdani who is reknown for his research work world over.
