Centre of Design, Innovation and Translational Excellence (CITE), initially focused on maternal and neonatal health with a long-term aspiration to build innovation and capacity in the low resource settings, this will act as a blueprint to stimulate innovations beyond maternal and child health and to expand technological and research expertise to become the leading center for academic excellence and innovations in biomedical engineering in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This centre, started in May, 2019, has thus far won three funded projects from Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and Medical Research Council (MRC). To date, we have focused on building an international collaborative network of engineers and clinical researchers between Uganda and the UK. The aim of this network will be to expand our collaborative network to other key disciplines including social science, implementation science, business development and healthcare policy researchers.