Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 4, No. 1 | Makerere at the Crossroads, page 3

Before and after Amin
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. Uganda, a British protectorate since 1894, first recognized the need for such a school soon after World War I, when the demand for local craftsmen far exceeded the number of skilled workers available. In 1920, British Secretary of State Winston Churchill approved the establishment of a “native technical school at Kampala,” and the building of temporary classrooms and living quarters began the next year.

The first class included fourteen boys studying carpentry, building and mechanics—almost all of them speaking Luganda or Swahili. By the next year, officials saw a growing need for broader education and Uganda Technical College became Makerere College, named for the hill where the school’s permanent buildings would be constructed. The first one-story school building, dedicated in 1923, still stands today. The campus quickly grew larger, the requirements tougher and the curriculum more diversified.

Makerere officially expanded its role in the late 1930s, becoming the Centre for Higher Education in East Africa, before progress slowed during World War II as British staff members were called into the army. It was during this period that Carnegie Corporation made its first grant to the university—£1350 for a set of essential texts. In 1945 a breakthrough occurred with the admission of six women students, described in a book by Margaret Macpherson, an early faculty member.²

“The women made their way slowly into College life. At first the Students’ Council was reluctant to admit them and inclined to feel doubtful about the whole experiment, but within the year feelings had changed and there was, it is said, a noticeable increase in good manners among students upon the Hill in consequence of the presence of six redoubtable ladies, five of whom had already proved their ability in adult life and had proved, with tact and charm, that they were not an academic menace.”

By 1950, Makerere had been officially named the University College of East Africa and, having met strenuous requirements, was awarding external degrees of the University of London. Josephine Namboze, admitted that year to the Faculty of Science, became the first African woman doctor from Makerere. Fittingly, the medical school led the way in achieving international distinction and was recognized by the General Medical Council, the organization that registers doctors to practice medicine in the United Kingdom. The fifties were a decade of steady growth that saw Makerere students increasingly swept up in political activities.

Uganda gained its independence in 1962, and the following year Makerere joined with universities in Kenya and Tanzania to form the University of East Africa. The post-independence years were a high point for the institution, which now had a solid reputation and many prominent graduates. Uganda’s parliament made Makerere University an independent national university in 1970, ending its role in the University of East Africa and the University of London.

In 1971, Idi Amin seized power in a military coup, declaring himself Uganda’s president and plunging Makerere into a period of strife and instability from which it has yet to fully recover. During Amin’s eight-year reign, called the bloodiest in African history, as many as 500,000 people disappeared, many of them killed—their bodies reportedly dumped into the Nile when gravesites ran out.

The Amin regime decimated social services. Education was hit hardest, pushing Makerere to the brink of bankruptcy. At the same time, funds were shifted toward primary and secondary education, which upped demand for higher education. The university had little choice but to admit more students, but did so with fewer resources than ever, a situation made worse by a sharp decline in foreign donor support. As funding declined and salaries were cut, faculty left, laboratories and libraries were soon bare and dormitory conditions became deplorable. Technological advances that were changing education and communication around the world were virtually unknown in Uganda. Even after Amin’s ouster in 1979, the legacy of financial and governance crises lived on.

By 1990, Uganda was broke. The government, now run by the National Resistance Movement, was no longer in a position to support public services including higher education, and only sweeping reforms could save the economy and the university. According to Associate Professor Nakanyike B. Musisi, Ph.D., director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research, more liberal fiscal policies brought greater economic stability and easing of state control of the university. A series of transformations then took place, starting the university off on the long process of recovery despite declining financial support from the government. A renewed vision also emerged: To be a center of academic excellence, providing instruction, research and service relevant to sustainable development for the nation.

Reinventing the Ivory Tower
In Musisi’s view, Makerere has been transformed from “an ivory tower that had virtually lost touch with its environment, at odds with national development needs” to “an ally in meeting developmental challenges.” Uganda’s challenges are huge: Ranked 147th out of 175 countries in terms of human development, per capita annual income is around $330 (according to the United Nations Development Program). Even decades after the end of the destructive Amin era, with nearly 40 percent of its 21 million people living below the national poverty line, eradication of extreme poverty remains the country’s overriding challenge.

Today, instead of preparing a small number of the elite to become leaders, the university is dedicated to promoting innovations in teaching and research aimed at making higher education more relevant to the needs of the country at large. The Innovations at Makerere Committee (I@MAK) was created to make this change in direction succeed. Launched in February 2001, this initiative was set up to enable the central government, higher education institutions and local community councils to work together in building capacity to support the government’s antipoverty decentralization policy. Start-up educational programs were designed to equip graduates with the essential skills and attitudes needed for poverty alleviation work in the districts.

Over the past five years I@MAK has trained district staff, provided extension services, conducted research and integrated findings into its programs. Funding is made available for projects on an incremental basis, with a small grant upon approval of a concept paper, more funds at the pilot stage and the largest grant for full project implementation. The program, which was initially carried out solely at Makerere with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, was later expanded with additional funds from the World Bank to include other selected institutions of higher learning as well.

Samwiri Katunguka, manager of capacity building programs, says I@MAK’s training programs are focused entirely on poverty eradication. Direct support from the program allows local government workers to take first and second degrees, as well as continuing education courses, in medicine, agriculture, education, engineering and other subjects. “Our real success story has been problem-based learning,” says Katunguka. “It’s not the typical teacher-student dynamic; it is student led and the lecturer comes into the process at the end.” Another promising development: the new Makerere University Research Journal, published by I@MAK, debuted in March and offers an important forum for presentation and review of work done at the university and beyond.

While sustainability is a challenge (World Bank funding for I@MAK runs out at the end of 2006) several steps have been taken to address this issue. An investment policy has been put in place to generate further revenue that can be used for basic academic costs as well as staff retention, infrastructure, library improvements and outside recruitment. Makerere has become a 24-hour campus, and “even 12 to 6 AM classes are oversubscribed,” says Katunguka. Makerere is “on the move, changing very fast to improve services to the population,” he says. “This is a model that can work.”

Next page: Since 2001, Carnegie Corporation's scholarship program for undergraduate
women has helped to build Makerere's educational capacity.

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² McPherson, Margaret. They Built for the Future, 1964, Cambridge University Press, London