Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 4, No. 1 | Makerere at the Crossroads, page 2

The Harvard of Africa?
Fifty or so years ago a comparison was drawn between Makerere and Harvard and, accurate or not, it stuck. The two universities are alike in that both are seen as premier institutions in their home country, says Narciso Matos, chair of Carnegie Corporation’s International Development Program. The countries, clearly, are quite different. Notwithstanding, Makerere is renowned for its high-profile graduates including past presidents and key ministers of Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda.

Makerere’s putative status as “the Harvard of Africa” came under attack in October 2005 in an attention-grabbing article in the Washington Post that cast the university in an unfavorable light and distressed longstanding Makerere supporters, including Carnegie Corporation. Along with the other members of the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa—the Ford, MacArthur, Rockefeller, Hewlett and Mellon foundations—Carnegie Corporation has pledged $200 million over the next five years to a select group of African universities. The Corporation’s strategy has been to help strengthen basic parts of the university infrastructure such as the library, where a six-figure grant supported the installation of computers and Internet access. It’s a potentially risky approach, based on the belief that strengthening the institution’s essential systems and helping build up its intellectual capital will drive innovation and empower the institution to withstand outside forces.

The Post’s criticism drew attention to Makerere’s evident deterioration, describing the university as underfunded and overrun, a poorly managed embarrassment desperately in need of modernization and expansion. “On The Foundation Center’s most recent list of the top fifty worldwide organizations receiving philanthropic support, Makerere came in seventh,” says Andrea Johnson, program officer in Carnegie Corporation’s International Development Program. “When a university in a small country is getting that much money, and is still in such bad shape, there’s reason to be concerned.”

The article was exaggerated and farfetched, according to Vice Chancellor Livingston Luboobi’s response. A more realistic assessment would take into account not only the university’s reputation for excellence in medicine, technology, agriculture and social sciences, but also such signs of progress as significant curriculum reforms, expanded e-learning and a 30 percent increase in teaching space coupled with a 10 percent reduction in student intake planned for every other year until optimum enrollment numbers are achieved.

“So many Ugandans educated here have played a significant role in the country’s politics and socio-economic development—and continue to do so,” says Helen Kawesah, the past public relations officer of Makerere who is now PR manager for Uganda’s parliament. “The university influence is widespread, improving lives throughout the country, and in the world.” Kawesah stresses the institution’s importance to women, particularly its affirmative action record and ongoing efforts to enhance the potential of Uganda’s women leaders—faculty, administration and in the political sphere. “The training they receive here gives women confidence to take on any role in society at large,” she says.

Institutional problems are serious, in Kawesah’s opinion, but they will pass. “Demand for university education is high and choices are few. Our infrastructure can’t support the numbers and private fees don’t bridge the gap,” she admits. The faculty/student ratio of about 1/30 is improving but isn’t good enough. While there is need for improvement, “the picture is not so bleak. We have managed to innovate and to attract development partners. We are not sitting and giving up,” Kawesah says. “Just the opposite, in fact. I’d say the sky’s the limit!”

Makerere, however, has more than one outspoken critic. Author Paul Theroux came to love the university while teaching English there in the 1960s. He returned 35 years later and describes his disappointment in the bestselling book, Dark Star Safari. Theroux mourns the fact that the school’s glory days are long gone, as the decaying campus makes plain. “In spite of some new buildings it looked a ghostly and decrepit place,” he writes. “Only the fact that the buildings had been well made so many years ago had kept them from falling down altogether, but anyone could see that the campus was a disgrace.”

Is Theroux’s grim assessment an accurate gauge of the institution as a whole? Is the once-great university on life support as the Post article seems to say…or is it still the center of academic excellence officials claim? We went to Makerere seeking answers to these questions, speaking directly to students, teachers and administrators and exploring conditions on campus first hand.

“Makerere is a very complex animal,” according to Narciso Matos. “Students tend to glorify the university because they know almost nothing else. This happens throughout Africa because your paradigm is limited.” Money is a huge problem for Makerere, Matos explains, and in order to generate revenue, tens of thousands of fee-paying students have been admitted. But government, which now fully subsidizes under 10 percent of students, has put a cap on fees for the university’s privately sponsored students, meaning enrollment has grown faster than income. Consequently, private students are paying far less than it costs for their education, but the government can’t risk raising fees and causing student demonstrations.

“Everyone agrees that the current model is not working,” Matos says. “Facilities are not adequate, first of all. If you visit a classroom and see hundreds of students, something is wrong. It’s clear to me that expansion of the university has not been controlled centrally, and the result is a serious imbalance among various faculties.” Educators too are overstretched and as a result can do very little research. “This is another reason why Makerere can’t be considered a Harvard—research is certainly not the mainstay.”

However, we shouldn’t write Makerere off, Matos says. Whatever its weaknesses, one fact is clear: Makerere is a survivor. “The defining element of the institution is the way it came back from near collapse after the Amin period. International relations were severed, faculty left. It was a very, very bad time. To understand the university, and Uganda, you must keep Amin in mind.”

Livingston S. Luboobi, Vice Chancellor

“I’ve spent more years here than in my home village, 160 kilometers away,” says Dr. Luboobi, who has lived on the Makerere campus since 1965. After attending high school on the hill, he turned down an offer to study engineering in Nairobi and “decided to stick around because life here was good. The late sixties were the best of times at the university,” Luboobi recalls, when “everything was available. People who were here then would be shocked if they returned now.” After getting his B.A. in 1970 Luboobi was hired as a teaching assistant in Makerere’s math department, and the next year accepted a commonwealth scholarship to the University of Toronto, Canada for a master’s degree.

Amin entered the picture soon after and all but destroyed the university, Luboobi says. Resources were so scarce, students survived a famine only because of food relief from the U.S. “Those were very, very difficult years.” When Luboobi’s Canadian professor heard what was going on in Uganda, “he thought I was part of the problem,” the vice chancellor says, “and I wondered how I would survive.” That professor’s sabbatical came just in time to rescue Luboobi, who got his degree and hurried home to find most of his colleagues had fled.

To get his Ph.D., Luboobi received a scholarship to the University of Adelaide, South Australia, but couldn’t afford the plane ticket. Miraculously, Makerere’s then vice chancellor came through with the fare, and agreed to let Luboobi’s wife and seven children live on campus during his absence—a mixed blessing, he says, because the 1979 war to remove Amin happened right in the university’s backyard “and a shell missed my house by only a few meters!” He kept track of events via the BBC and found the troubles at home “focused my mind and allowed me to write and submit my thesis in just two and a half years.”

Luboobi returned to Makerere and to his life as a lecturer. Although Amin was gone, the university’s hard times weren’t over; “We lost 20 years!” he says emphatically. “It wasn’t until the 1990s that capacity development and research programs became possible. Even now our resources can’t keep up with the population. Rebuilding will be a long-term process—not one or two years, but ten.” Leading this long-term effort is the number one task for the VC. The first vice chancellor in history to be elected by representatives of Makerere’s academic and administrative bodies, rather than being appointed by Uganda’s head of state, he is well aware that all eyes are on the university. “There is so much national pride invested here, so much interest in everything we do, even the smallest change is scrutinized,” he says. “One thing is certain: no one wants Makerere to disappear from the map.”

Next page: The history of Makerere's first fifty years is largely one of steady progress from a start-up technical school to a strong and vibrant university.

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