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International students and their instructor working with code and neural network models in a computing lab
School 1

School of Artificial Intelligence and Computing

The engine room of the University

This School is the intellectual core of Forward University and the source of the computational capability every other School draws upon. It builds the scientists, engineers and architects who create intelligent systems rather than merely consume them. The design principle is uncompromising: every student in this School graduates having trained, evaluated, deployed and audited a real model on real data, having broken somebody else's system in a supervised red team exercise, and having contributed to at least one open source or industry project that exists outside the University. The School is deliberately not a computer science department with a machine learning option attached. It is organised around the actual division of labour in a modern technology organisation, those who build models, those who build the data and platform substrate beneath them, those who secure them, and those who design how humans work with them.

Departments
5
Degree programmes
14
Credit units
1,684
Award levels
3

Source: Curriculum Compendium, Path One, page 105.

Departments and degrees

5 departments, 14 degree programmes

Every degree below is published in the Curriculum Compendium with a full term-by-term and block-by-block curriculum, programme learning outcomes and an employment thesis.

Department of Machine Learning and Foundation Models

Model architecture, training at scale, evaluation science, fine tuning and alignment, African language and low resource modelling, efficiency under constrained compute.

5 degrees
Department page

Department of Data Science and Analytics

Statistical learning, causal inference, decision science, data visualisation, and the analytics that convert information into institutional advantage.

2 degrees
Department page

Department of Software, Cloud and Platform Engineering

Modern software craft, distributed systems, cloud native architecture, agentic developer workflows, reliability and platform engineering.

3 degrees
Department page

Department of Cybersecurity and Digital Trust

Offensive and defensive security, cryptography, digital forensics, identity systems, and the security of machine learning systems themselves.

3 degrees
Department page

Department of Human and Machine Interaction

Interaction design for intelligent systems, human factors, accessibility, conversational systems, and the science of human-machine teaming.

1 degree
Department page

Open now · First accreditation wave

Programmes accepting applications

Showing 14 of 14 programmes

BSc (Hons)Hybrid · 4 years (8 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Bachelor of Science in Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence and big data is the fastest growing skill category in the world, two thirds of employers intend to hire specifically for it, and the measured wage premium for demonstrable AI capability now exceeds sixty per cent of ...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
BSc (Hons)Hybrid · 4 years (8 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with Advanced and Quantum Computing

Every serious technology economy needs a small number of people who understand computation deeply enough to build the layer everyone else stands on: compilers, runtimes, schedulers, numerical kernels, cryptographic primitives and, increasin...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
BSc (Hons)Hybrid · 4 years (8 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Bachelor of Science in Computing Infrastructure and Cloud Systems

Every organisation that wants intelligent systems, digital services or reliable operations discovers the same binding constraint: it cannot build or run the infrastructure underneath them. Cloud architecture, systems engineering, networks and site reliability are the least glamorous and most ...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
BSc (Hons)Hybrid · 3 years (6 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Bachelor of Science in Cybersecurity and Digital Trust

Uganda is digitising public services, payments and identity faster than it is producing people qualified to defend them, and the shortage is acute at exactly the level — hands on defensive operations — where the region's degree programmes a...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
BSc (Hons)Hybrid · 4 years (8 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Bachelor of Science in Cybersecurity Operations and Infrastructure Defence

Uganda is digitising public services, payments and identity faster than it is producing people who can defend the infrastructure underneath them, and the shortage is most acute not in policy but in hands on defensive operations: the engineers who harden a network, run a security operations centre, ...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
BSc (Hons)Hybrid · 3 years (6 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Bachelor of Science in Data Science and Analytics

Every institution in Uganda now holds more data than it can interpret, and almost none of them can convert it into a decision. The gap is not modelling talent; it is the far scarcer ability to move from a messy administrative dataset to a d...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
BSc (Hons)Hybrid · 4 years (8 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Bachelor of Science in Software Engineering with Intelligent Systems

The largest addressable domestic technology market in Uganda is software, and the largest single complaint from employers is that graduates can pass an algorithms examination but have never shipped anything to a user, never operated a syste...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
PhDHybrid · 3 to 5 years · Intake August 2027

Doctor of Philosophy in Artificial Intelligence

Africa cannot import its way to research capacity. This doctorate is designed to produce researchers who will stay, supervise, and build institutions, and it therefore carries two requirements unusual in the region: every candidate must pub...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
MScHybrid · 12 months (3 terms) · Intake August 2027

Master of Science in Applied Artificial Intelligence

A practitioner conversion degree for working professionals — clinicians, bankers, engineers, agronomists, civil servants, teachers, lawyers — who need to build and govern intelligent systems in their own sector rather than become research s...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
MScHybrid · 18 months (3 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Master of Science in Applied Machine Learning

There is a large and growing population of technically capable professionals in the region who can program and reason quantitatively but who cannot yet build, evaluate and deploy machine learning systems to a professional standard. They do not need a research degree; they need a rigorous, build ...

Includes 0 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
MScHybrid · 18 months (3 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Master of Science in Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics

Uganda's critical financial, identity and public service infrastructure is now digital, and the national capacity to investigate, attribute and defend against attacks on it is thin. This programme builds senior defenders, investigators and ...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
MScHybrid · 18 months (3 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Master of Science in Data Engineering and Cloud Architecture

Every organisation that wants intelligent systems discovers first that it cannot get to its own data. Data engineering is the least glamorous and most binding constraint on African AI adoption, and it is almost entirely untaught at postgrad...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
MScHybrid · 12 months (2 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Master of Science in Human-Centred AI Systems

Most intelligent systems fail not because the model was wrong but because the system ignored the people who had to use it, trust it or live with its decisions. Human centred design, human computer interaction, and the study of how people and intelligent systems actually work together have become ...

Includes 0 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis
MScHybrid · 18 months (3 semesters) · Intake August 2027

Master of Science in Machine Learning and Foundation Models

A research intensive degree for the small number of people who will build, adapt and evaluate frontier-class models on and for the continent. It exists because Africa is acquiring accelerated computing faster than it is acquiring the people...

Includes 12 months paid work-integrated learning

Programme and employment thesis

Coming in future intakes

Planned, not yet accredited

These programmes are designed but will not open until the relevant accreditation wave is complete. We list them so the pipeline is visible, not to imply you can apply.

  • BSc Cybersecurity and Digital Trust · Future intake
  • BSc Computing Infrastructure and Cloud Systems · Future intake
  • MSc Applied Machine Learning · Future intake
  • MSc Human-Centred AI Systems · Future intake
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