April 24, 2026 · DEC Resource Center
Celebrating academic excellence - a keynote from industry, two RA sessions, poster presentations, and five awards recognising the best research from CMU Africa's graduate community.
CTO, Digital Umuganda · Kigali, Rwanda
Mr. Rutunda opened the Research Showcase with an industry perspective on how African-led technology is reshaping digital infrastructure across the continent. Drawing from his work building civic technology products at Digital Umuganda, he challenged researchers to close the gap between academic inquiry and deployable solutions that serve real communities.
"The best research doesn't end in a paper - it ends in a product that changes someone's life. Africa's researchers are uniquely positioned to solve African problems. This showcase is proof of that."
Two researchers presented their ongoing work, showcasing the depth of graduate-level inquiry at CMU Africa.
Exploring how AI-powered acoustic diagnostics can extend quality cardiovascular care to communities lacking specialist access - combining deep learning with stethoscope signals to enable early, remote detection.
Designing robotic systems that honour African cultural norms, social cues, and linguistic diversity - moving beyond Western-centric frameworks to build machines that feel familiar and trustworthy to African communities.
Five categories recognising outstanding research across posters, capstone projects, and academic papers.
JEPA-NAV: A Vision-Based Joint Embedding Architecture for Safe Indoor Navigation
Decolonizing Edge AI: National Standards for Culturally Adaptive Quantized SLMs
ImaraCare: Contact-Free Fetal Heart Rate Monitoring Using Wi-Fi Channel State Information for Low-Resource Sub-Saharan African Settings
The African Speech Parity Gap: Benchmarking Edge-AI Across 32 Languages
Fairness-Aware Credit Scoring
A glimpse into the energy and excitement of Research Showcase 2026.
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Candid moments, poster sessions, award presentations, and the community that makes it all possible.
Research Showcase is one of many ways we celebrate excellence at CMU Africa. Join our community, present your work, and collaborate on research that matters.