Uganda’s government-run technology training institute trained more than 48,000 people in digital and emerging-technology skills over the last financial year, according to figures presented at the 2026 Ministry of ICT and National Guidance ICT Sector Annual Performance Review Retreat. The Uganda Institute of Information and Communications Technology (UICT), the country’s only government institution dedicated to skills-based, middle-level ICT training, laid out the numbers as part of a broader progress report on digital skilling, innovation, and technical and vocational education covering the 2025/26 financial year.
Who Actually Got Trained
The 48,000-plus figure isn’t one homogenous cohort — it’s four distinct groups, presented by UICT Principal Dr. Fredrick E. Kitoogo. The largest share, 36,332 people, were ordinary citizens going through general digital-skills training. Alongside them, UICT trained 1,932 government officers and 1,207 educators and TVET instructors — a detail worth noting, since training the trainers tends to multiply reach well beyond the number in the room. The remaining 8,977 participants went through immersive and emerging-technology skills training specifically, covering the kind of frontier tech — augmented and virtual reality among them — that Uganda’s broader digital economy strategy is betting on.
Building the Capacity to Keep Training
Beyond the headline number, UICT also used the retreat to report on its own capacity growth: it certified 65 new trainers over the year and developed 21 augmented, virtual, and extended reality (AVR/XR) courses and modules. That distinction matters. Certifying trainers and building out course content is what determines whether an institution can keep scaling its training numbers year over year, rather than plateauing once its existing staff and curriculum are stretched thin.
What UICT Actually Is
For an institution most Ugandans outside the tech sector may not know by name, UICT’s footprint is bigger than a single year’s numbers suggest. Founded in 2000 by the Uganda Communications Commission, it runs roughly 95 training centres nationwide, largely through partnerships with other national institutions, and offers certificate- and diploma-level ICT training as a practical alternative to university. In 2022, the International Telecommunication Union designated UICT a Digital Transformation Centre, placing it in a select global network of institutions the ITU backs to lead national digital-skilling efforts.
Beyond the Classroom
UICT’s ambitions extend past training delivery. Its National ICT Innovation Hub is positioned to support innovators turning ideas into solutions with real economic and social impact — part of a broader push to combine skills training with applied research and commercialisation, rather than treating them as separate tracks.
What’s Next
For the 2026/27 financial year, UICT says it will prioritise quality ICT and digital-skills education, applied research and innovation, infrastructure modernisation, commercialisation of innovation, institutional excellence, and full TVET compliance. The institute has also tied its roadmap to Uganda’s National Development Plan IV, with plans to expand digital-skills training, strengthen student certification, deepen its innovation ecosystem, and improve institutional governance.
Why It Matters
Digital-skilling numbers rarely make for dramatic headlines, but the scale here is genuinely significant for a single institution in a single year — and the composition matters as much as the total. Training nearly 2,000 government officers and over 1,200 educators alongside the general public suggests UICT is trying to build capacity that compounds: officers who can apply digital skills across public services, and educators who can pass those skills on to students UICT itself will never train directly. Whether that compounding effect shows up in Uganda’s broader digital economy will depend less on this year’s total than on whether UICT can keep growing its trainer base and course catalogue fast enough to match it.
