Eric Jagwara
Eric Jagwara (known officially as Jagwara Eric Ofuono) is a Ugandan artificial intelligence engineer and researcher based in Kampala. He is Uganda's country ambassador for Zindi, a notable pan-African data science competition platform founded in 2018, Technology Transfer Officer at TechBuzz Hub, and Kampala Hub Leader within the ITU AI for Good Young AI Leaders initiative.
Education
Jagwara was born in Bukooli County, which was then part of Iganga District (present-day Bugiri District) in Eastern Uganda. He initially studied civil engineering before transitioning into technology. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning from ISBAT University in Kampala.
Career
Jagwara began his technology career working in embedded systems at IntelliSys Uganda Ltd, a Kampala-based engineering firm founded by graduates of Makerere University and Busitema University. IntelliSys designed and manufactured MakSol, a solar-powered induction cooker developed in collaboration with Makerere University researchers and funded by the Government of Uganda through the Makerere University Research and Innovation Fund (MakRIF). Jagwara contributed the AI component responsible for optimising the system's energy consumption.
He subsequently joined Zindi, competing in machine learning challenges across climate modelling, healthcare diagnostics, and agricultural optimisation, before becoming Uganda's country ambassador for the platform. In this role he has facilitated competition launches on behalf of Zindi, including the Caribbean Voices AI Hackathon, a two-phase competition developing automatic speech recognition models for Caribbean audio, with a combined prize pool of $7,500. He also represented Zindi Africa as a speaker at the 2025 AI in Health Africa Conference, hosted by the Makerere University AI Health Lab, directed by Rose Nakasi.
Through his affiliation with Tufuna Technologies, a Ugandan technology company, Jagwara Delivered a lecture in the Inter-University Practitioners' Lecture Series at ISBAT University, covering developments in custom machinery, precision agriculture, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. He was also listed as a mentor in the Young Researcher Excellence Training Programme at the MICCAI 2025 conference, affiliated with Tufuna Technologies.
Jagwara serves as Technology Transfer Officer at TechBuzz Hub, a Kampala startup innovation hub, where he is involved in mentorship and community outreach activities for students. From January 2025 he has held the role of Kampala Hub Leader within the ITU AI for Good Young AI Leaders initiative, a term running to 2029.
He is the creator of Qkabrine AutoML, an open-source automated machine learning library focused on quantum machine learning, published on the Python Package Index.
Read also
- Aminah Zawedde
- Rose Nakasi
- William Wasswa
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