For those unfamiliar, the Global Innovation Index (GII) is published annually by the World Intellectual Property Organization – WIPO, with supporting networks from the industry, academia, and research. The GII is extremely useful for informing investment, policy, reforms, and innovation strategies. The GII 2025 measures innovation performance across 139 countries and the top 100 innovation clusters.
This year, the GII was launched under the theme: “Innovation at a Crossroads”, and one thing is clear: resilience and adaptability remain more vital than ever, as the world navigates economic uncertainty.
Uganda’s performance:
Uganda maintains the 4th rank in low-income countries following Rwanda, Togo, and Madagascar, and overall rank of 124 out of 139 countries (compared to last year, 121 out of 134).
Strengths and Progress
- Institutions & Business Environment: Uganda continues to show strength in ease of doing business, domestic market diversification, and policy stability (ranked 53 for business policy stability). A stable and supportive legal, policy, and political environment remains key for innovation to thrive.
- Education: Tertiary education is improving. The share of graduates in science and engineering rose significantly (ranked 73 in 2025, up from 96 in 2024). This is a positive sign for building future talent in innovation.
- Digital Economy: ICT service exports improved (rank 59 in 2025 vs. 65 in 2024), showing clear potential for digital exports. We can build on our young, tech-savvy population to scale digital innovation.
Areas for Improvement
- Knowledge & Technology Outputs: Patents, scientific publications, and utility models remain weak. This highlights the challenge of translating education and institutional inputs into knowledge outputs. More investment in R&D, stronger university–industry partnerships, and integrating STEM with intellectual property (IP) education are needed.
- Research & Development: The number of researchers per FTE declined slightly, and there are still no global corporate R&D investors in Uganda. Stronger collaboration across universities, industry, and research institutions is essential.
- Creative Industries: Creative outputs have declined, with losses in national feature films and creative goods exports, yet Uganda has strong cultural and artistic potential that could be better monetized globally with investment and infrastructure.
As a country, our opportunities for growth lie in institutions, the business environment, and a growing STEM talent. To leverage these areas, we need to boost R&D investment, build stronger collaborations between universities and the private sector for technology transfer and innovation, scaling up creative and digital outputs, and most importantly, prioritizing quality, innovation-driven education integrating STEM and IP.
Overall performance for the 139 countries:
Overall, there is a positive socioeconomic impact: The GII 2025 shows innovation continues to deliver gains in productivity, health outcomes, and poverty reduction. This is good news for innovation.
One notable area of growth is the health and infrastructure indicator, particularly in safe sanitation and cancer therapy technologies. However, infrastructure gaps remain in lower-income economies, although there is progress. Reading this, I immediately thought of Shamim nabuuma, whose work at Chil Femtech Center with the Dettol Hygiene Quest and the Chil AI Lab for mobile cancer screening is driving innovation in exactly these areas here in Uganda and beyond.
What can Uganda learn from the top innovators (Switzerland, Sweden, USA)? For me, the message is clear: education and R&D matter. These leading countries invest in both, and the results are clear. For low-income countries like ours, strengthening STEM and IP in education, supporting R&D investment and collaboration, and backing the private sector (especially youth-led firms at the heart of innovation) is crucial.
The GII 2025 introduced a new indicator – University–Industry and International Engagement. This indicator combines industry ties and international collaboration across an economy’s top universities. As it was aptly put: “Universities are central to innovation – producing knowledge, training talent, and linking academia, industry and government.”
China’s example shows how rapid university expansion plus industry R&D activity creates fertile ground for innovation. Encouragingly, Uganda ranked 63rd in this indicator, with Makerere University recognized for its strong international engagement. Kudos to the institution, which also hosts Makerere University Innovation Pod and one of Uganda’s 37 Technology Innovation Support Centers (TISCs) that are resources for supporting research and innovation efforts, continuing to drive IP awareness and research collaboration. Not forgetting Uganda Registration Services Bureau URSB which has consistently collaborated with Makerere University and other Universities to promote IP and innovation.
Lessons from GII 2025:
The GII 2025 highlighted three broad messages from this year’s findings:
1. There is broad participation in innovation. Innovation capacity is expanding across regions and income groups. These economies are strengthening innovation through investment, education and business dynamism
2. There is diversity in how economies engage in innovation. Some are leveraging strengths in high-tech manufacturing or digital services, while others are tapping into creative industries, natural resource linkages or regional market dynamics. This diversity means that there is no single path to innovation success. Rather, countries are finding ways to adapt innovation models to their unique economic structures and capabilities.
3. Innovation ecosystems are increasingly shaped by agility and responsiveness. Economies that can adapt quickly – by embracing new technologies, supporting startups and strengthening linkages across sectors – are gaining ground. Innovation is no longer only about long-term investment into science, but also about the ability to act in response to global shifts, including digital transformation and sustainability. As the world navigates economic uncertainty, the ability to adapt and innovate across sectors and borders will remain a defining advantage.
Morocco as a case study:
At rank 57, its success is powered by IP, specifically trademarks, industrial design, and education investment, and intangible asset development. As Sarah Bisamunyu highlighted in her recent post spotlighting Morocco, IP generation and knowledge investment are driving Morocco’s transition toward higher value-added production. The question for us: how can we help Uganda’s private sector move up the value chain the way Morocco has?
What do we learn and where do we go?
Policymakers, business leaders, and academia need to:
- Invest in sustainable innovation-driven R&D and education.
- Strengthen university–private sector collaboration.
- Ensure access to finance, especially for startups (there was a significant reduction in VC).
- Improve measurement and data systems to guide evidence-based policymaking (most low-income countries lack data or have data that is not updated).
How can Uganda and other low-income countries build innovation ecosystems that are both resilient and globally competitive?
Access the Global Innovation Index 2025 here
