Kampala, Uganda — 28th January 2026
As we celebrate 20 years of advancing research and education through the provision of affordable and reliable connectivity and other related ICT services, we have successfully upgraded our backbone network to 200 Gigabits per second (Gbps).
This significant milestone positions Uganda’s research and education community to meet growing data demands and future digital innovation needs, while also strengthening our readiness to support data-intensive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), advanced computing, and big data–driven research across our member institutions.
The upgrade, completed on 3rd October 2025, saw us scale our core backbone link from 10 to 200 Gbps. This expansion reflects the rapid growth in traffic across our network over the past decade, driven by increased digital learning, data-intensive research, cloud services, and collaboration among member institutions.
The upgrade is not just a technical achievement; it tells a story of sustained growth, strategic partnerships, and a long-term commitment to empowering Uganda’s research and education community with world-class digital infrastructure.
What 200 Gbps Means for Members and Stakeholders
For existing RENU members, the upgrade is not just about speed; the enhanced backbone delivers greater reliability, scalability, affordability, performance and future-readiness, ensuring the network can keep pace with increasing academic and research demands. For institutions and organisations not yet connected, the expansion signals that RENU is ready to support high-capacity, data-driven use cases now and into the future.
“This upgrade allows us to lower the cost of bandwidth for our member institutions,” says Brian Masiga. “It means universities and research institutions can access more capacity at a lower cost, enabling them to do the work that truly matters.”
The increased capacity will enhance services across RENU’s ecosystem, including Metro eduroam, eduroam on the Go and campus networks, ensuring more bandwidth reaches students, researchers, academic staff and administrators.
Collaboration with Sikt
This milestone was made possible through strategic international collaboration, particularly with Sikt, Norway’s National Research and Education Network (NREN). The partnership was established through the NREN Twinning Programme, organised and funded by GÉANT, Europe’s research and education networking organization.
“When colleagues from Sikt visited RENU in February 2024, they saw our network firsthand and identified gaps,” Patience Nagaba explains. “They later realised they had equipment that could significantly strengthen our backbone, and they sent it to us. That support directly enabled this major upgrade.”
The Journey from 1 Gbps to 200 Gbps: A Decade of Growth
Our backbone network journey began in 2014, when the network first became operational, following years of collaboration under the Bandwidth Consortium model. We worked through a Bandwidth Consortium with one of the leading telecom companies at the time. Since then, our network backbone has expanded in response to the rapidly growing demand for data-intensive research, teaching and collaboration.
“From 2006 to 2014, we worked through a Bandwidth Consortium that allowed us to connect a few universities at subsidised rates,” says Brian Masiga, CEO of RENUMESH Technologies and former Head of Network Operations at RENU. “But when UbuntuNet Alliance arrived in Uganda in 2013, supported by the European Union through the AfricaConnect Project, we were able to build our own 1 Gbps network starting with the first site in 2014.”
These 1 Gbps links marked the foundation of RENU’s independent national backbone and the beginning of a steady upward trajectory.
“With growing demand, we upgraded from 1 Gbps to 2 Gbps, then to 10 Gbps,” Brian Masiga explains. “But today’s milestone is different. We have now upgraded our network twenty times over — from 10 Gbps to 200 Gbps.”
“In 2017, our biggest backbone link was just 1 Gbps,” recalls Patience Nagaba, Head of Network Operations at RENU. “At the time, upgrading to 10 Gbps felt massive. We were very excited about the upgrade and proud. But eight years later, those links could no longer handle the traffic we are pushing through the network.”
By 2025, the exponential growth in traffic made another leap inevitable. We have now upgraded all 10 Gbps links to 100 Gbps, with the largest backbone link reaching 200 Gbps.
“Having seen the network grow from 1 Gbps to 200 Gbps is truly exciting,” Patience Nagaba adds. “This upgrade means we now have much bigger pipes and hence capacity to serve the needs of our members today and in future.”
Enabling Research, Innovation, and AI Readiness
Uganda plays a leading role in infectious disease research across Africa, generating vast volumes of genomic and scientific data.
“With 200 Gbps, large genome sequencing data sets can now move seamlessly across the network,” Brian Masiga notes. “This is critical for cutting-edge research and international collaboration.”
The upgrade also lays a strong foundation for RENU’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategy.
“This is the first step in making our infrastructure AI-ready, from our data centres to our institutions,” Brian Masiga adds. “It’s not just about browsing faster. It’s about supporting data-heavy research, lowering costs, and preparing Uganda’s education and research community for the future.”
