Makerere University AirQo project has won US$1.3 million grant

From an open call to organizations around the world issued by Google.org  to submit their ideas of how they could use AI to help address societal challenges. The AirQo project from Makerere University was among the 20 selected projects from 2,602 applications from 119 countries, spanning 6 continents with projects ranging from environmental to humanitarian.

The AirQo project is on a mission to contribute to the improvement of urban ambient air quality by providing scientific evidence and low-cost technologies to quantify and inform policy to reduce, contain and better manage air pollution and its associated health risks.

The AirQo project is run by a team led by Assoc. Prof. Engineer Bainomugisha. The team is comprised of students and other staff from the Department of Computer Science, School of Computing and Information Technology, CoCIS.

The project is currently being implemented in several places within Kampala and other regions of the country such as Bududa, Mbale, Manafwa, Masaka, Bundibugyo ,Bugiri and Luwero.

The AirQo project team will receive a US$1.3million grant to scale up their existing air quality monitoring coverage and to make use of artificial intelligence (AI) to improve forecasting accuracy, raise awareness of air quality issues and inform public policy making in this critical area. As a grantee of the Google AI Impact Challenge, the team will receive credit and consulting benefits from Google Cloud and coaching by Google’s AI experts.

More information about AirQo project can be obtained from https://airqo.net/

More information about the Google AI Impact Challenge can be obtained from https://ai.google/social-good/impact-challenge/