The formation of Makerere Matters Foundation started in earnest during my visit to Kampala in January 2008. The next few months saw the completion of legalities relating to the establishment of MMF and the confirmation of its terms and reference and most importantly the definition of its accountability and probity as an external agency of Makerere University.

The onset of the worldwide recession led to the delay in the fulfilment of early promises to fund the organisation as a priority African development initiative. True to their commitment, one of the major corporations that have been approached by us fulfilled its obligations to support a major HIV/AIDS project in South Africa. We are hoping to revive our proposals again as soon as the business climate in the UK recovers from the recent scenarios of ‘doom and gloom’. Media focus on the recession, the banking crash and the credit crunch has made fund-raising for a new project in Africa very challenging indeed.

There have been two other lessons. Support for major capital investment projects is now virtually provided by national and international agencies, the UN and agencies of the World Bank. MMF does not fall into these spheres, as yet, suggesting that there could be future options for working with international agencies. The impetus for these is going to come from two further lessons:

a)      MMF will seek greater collaborations with faculties at Makerere University, working through the MUPSF, which is chaired my VC Professor Luboobi and headed by Mr Nuha Mwesigwa. A number of project areas have been identified in which Kalwant Ajimal has personal influence as an entrepreneur and a member of various sector groups that are active in the UK.  The first of these is Digital Inclusion, or ensuring access to digital technologies for development.

b)      The second area of influence in which Kalwant Ajimal has excellent networks and partnership based initiatives on the ground is creative culture, represented by a number of major programmes and projects, consisting of festivals, exhibitions and educational outcomes. The most significant area of Kalwant Ajimal’s success is Ephemeral Arts, details of which are provided in the next post.

c)       Taken together, digital inclusion and creative culture provide a sound basis for working with Makerere University until large scale institutional funds can be identified for joint working with Makerere University via MUPSF.

Following this decision, several new links have been added to this weblog. Please see the spaces at the bottom of the text

A final addition is a dedicated weblog for Makerere University Alumni Abroad, notably the Ugandan Asian alumni who are mostly settled in the UK, Canada and USA. A draft weblog has been created and has been sent to a number of alumni for consultation before it is announced here. This weblog will seek immediate action to raise funds for priority needs in various faculties.

Makerere University has marked a major programme of high profile development with its plan to repositioning itself. Last year it started to consolidate the establishment of the Makerere University Private Sector Forum (MUPSF) as a central means of interfacing with the Private Sector, and bringing it on board to influence the University’s policy agenda. Investment in the development of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships will also be one of the key issues in the University’s 10 year strategic plan for 2008 -2019.
MUPSF has led to the inauguration of Honorary Professors from the Public and Private Sector and has overseen the setting up a Professor’s Consultative platform (PCP), for image building and raising resources for the University. The PCP initiated the establishment of Endowed Chairs and Centres of Excellence Programme (ECCEP) to raise resources to attract research, training and mentoring of students and providing scholarships. A programme for taking the University off campus through Centres of Excellence to promote innovations, business incubation and technology transfer has also started.
Professor Ali A Mazrui, the doyen of leading international thinkers, academics and opinion leaders in political science was identified as the first to lead in the establishment of the 1st Endowed Chair and Centre for Global studies at Makerere Main Campus, a programme which is also set to raise USD 15 Million. Makerere Matters Foundation is adopting this project as one of its main targets for its fund-raising programme for 2009 to 2015. 

I believe that choice of Professor  Ali A Mazrui and his work was an excellent choice because of his outstanding scholarly work at a global scale and his close engagement with the real politics of the day; his thinking was of paramount importance and greatly impacted on political analysis at the ‘street level’ something that not many academics can maintain. I know that students of political science were proud of Professor Mazrui’s incisive thinking and many would want to be in touch with the learned professor today when many of Makerere University alumni are themselves holding positions of immense responsibility.

Many other former academics of high standing and people who helped to make Makerere University a centre of excellence and to develop its illustrious track-record have also been identified to receive recognition. This is a clear demonstration that Makerere does not forget people who have helped to make its mark and retain its envious position despite the problems that it faced in the early 1970s.    Professor Ali A Mazrui is being celebrated because of his outstanding scholarly work at a global scale let alone the strong foundation he himself built as a result of the launch of his successful career at Makerere University; which he always talks about.  A unique factor that I remember as a young student at Makerere was that Professor Mazrui’s lectures were hugely popular, not only in his faculty but hundreds of  students who did not even enrol for his classes were known to sneak into Professor Mazrui’s classes. Mazrui’s work also posed constant challenge to political leadership all over Africa but what I found unique, an experience that I have never enjoyed anywhere else, is how Professor Mazrui’s work had an impact at the street level. Taxi drivers, passengers waiting for buses, people at market stalls and newspaper readers were all fascinated by his clear and incisive analysis of the politics of the day.

Makerere Matters Foundation will be contacting Makerere University alumni just as it visited the Makerere University reunion in Vancouver in August last year. I was privileged to deliver the Vice Chancellor’s Key Note Address on behalf of Professor Livingstone Luboobi, who was called away to attend to State duties.

Further information on the Mazrui Endowed Chair is available on the university’s website on http://MUPSF.mak.ac.ug . I am grateful to Mr Nuha Mwesigwa, the Director of MUPSF who has provided detailed information on the above landmark event. I expect to feature further news here soon.

Kalwant Ajimal FRSA

Special Envoy, Makerere University

Guildford, England

The text, which reproduced, is presented as a Statement of opportunity for investment partnership in the proposed Makerere Africa Institute of Sustainability (MAIoS); a new vehicle for taking Africa into an Ecological Age.

Professor Livingstone Luboobi, The Vice Chancellor of Makerere University, who is also Chairman of Makerere University Private Sector Forum (MUPSF), has expressed concern over the need to redirect efforts into ecological age as a means of taking the world to one planet. In his call for investment partnerships in the proposed Makerere Africa Institute of Sustainability Professor Luboobi states thus:  

‘Global warming and adverse climate change…global food crisis leading to food riots, including in Africa… global oil price hikes…water and air pollution…species extinction…famine, etc. These are some of the signs of our fragile planet due to human instigated development leading to environmental degradation’.  

For further details please see ‘Focus on Sustainability’ above.

Mr Mwesigwa brings extensive experience of developing partnerships and collaborations, working with sectoral initiatives aimed at adding value to the economy and helping to forge joint venture partnerships after carrying out reviews, conducting negotiations and developing joint agendas.

I have requested Makerere University to place three directors of the London based board of Makerere Matters Foundation. This request is critical for MMF to demonstrate transparency, accountability and probity – a key requirement to retain public confidence and donors’ continued support for programmes that are being announced on this website.

Further, some prominent writers including Nuruddin Farah, Ali Mazrui, David Rubadiri, Ngugu wa Thiongo , Paul Theroux and Peter Nazareth were at Makerere University at one point in their writing and academic careers.

For a full listing, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makerere_University

Makerere alumni meet next month in Vancouver, courtesy of a group of ‘loyalist alumni’ who have been putting in a great deal of work into planning and hosting the gathering.  Details are available at www.makerere08reunion.com  The reunion starts on Friday 15^th August and ends on Sunday 17^th August.

Makerere alumni who have been at the forefront are  (names on alphabetical order) Tazdin Esmail, Mendi Lakhani,  Sham Merali, Sultanieh (Sue ) Rajabali, Alnoor Sovani and their families, partners and colleagues.

The value of their work is also acknowledged by Makerere University and plans have been made for the reunion to receive the Vice Chancellor Professor Livingston Luboobi, Mr Nuha Mwesigwa who is the Director of the Makerere University Private Sector Forum and another senior colleague. I will also be joining them and look forward to meeting many former students and their partners and families. 

I am trilled and honoured to accept this invitation from Professor Luboobi and an institution that gave hundreds of graduates like me so much. My task, amongst many others, will be to generate new projects and partnerships in the United Kingdom, Europe and North America in the first instance. One of the key actions will be to restore links with hundreds of Asian alumni who fled the country in 1972. They all carry immense goodwill for Makerere and for Uganda as a whole. This goodwill is a positive force which can be converted to bring tangible benefit to the university.

Professor Luboobi’s letter also contains many other important aspects of vision, policy and search for practical solutions. These observations are presented as a special page which is provided above and entitled ’Analysis of Needs’.

Kalwant Ajimal

However, the emerging debate that is taking place now is about students from international backgrounds who want to study at Makerere and how the university will be encouraging more students to apply.

Makerere had built a substantial international presence up to the early seventies. Many overseas students were studying there on ‘exchange’ programmes. Others had opted to study there in preference to universities in their home countries, notably students from Kenya and Tanzania.

The extensive international representation in the student body was repeated even more successfully in the faculty. Makerere had attracted outstanding international scholars who went there on exchange visits, to open new departments and to carry out original research and study in emerging subjects of the time. Many international development agencies also funded the exchange of faculty and to help build new departments.

Here is a link to the BBC News website which supporters of Makerere will find of interest: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7342706.stm

This is a new programme of development born out of respect and acknowledgement for a University that gave hundreds of students an excellent start in their careers. Makerere Matters Foundation is registered in England and aims to rebuild the emotional ‘place’ that the institution enjoyed in the minds and hearts of hundreds of Makerere alumni who now live outside Uganda. Many of the former ‘Ugandan Asian’ alumni are no longer Ugandan Asian. They have British, Canadian, American, European and many other nationalities and have made other countries their home after the events which took place in 1972.

Makerere has also persevered. It has registered phenomenal achievements. The university has survived many challenges and threats since I last left the campus in April 1972, exactly 35 years ago! My return to Makerere in January this year was emotional but also reassuring. The ‘spirit’ of Makerere was there to be absorbed again. On the day I arrived, all senior academics and management heads were all busy with a Graduation Day… even more nostalgic as it reminded me of the formal graduation that the Asians in the class of 1972 never had.

Makerere Matters Foundation (or Makerere Matters and sometimes abbreviated as MMF) is a bridge but not to the past- much as it was wonderful and nostalgic. Makerere Matters Foundation will now aim to engage hundreds of alumni, friends, sponsors and donors to support new programme initiatives which merit additional support for innovative projects and challenges for the future. The funds that we raise will not be ‘sunk’ into current cash-flow of the university, although Makerere, like any university in the world could use any extra funds that were to be made available. A look at any search engine on the Internet under ‘university fundraising’ will show hundreds of appeals, many of them by well funded places of learning with substantial endowments.

Universities, like hospitals and airports, have to deal with infinite demand for core and related services. Unfortunately, resources are finite, thereby creating a dilemma of making choices. It goes without saying that the best development plans and projections can go wrong when funds dry up for any number of reasons. However, the logic of managing a business which many say that universities really are, also requires that the university should generate its own income and set up endowment funds, from which they can ‘dripfeed’ major projects with the proceeds of endowments. Sadly, not many establishments are lucky enough to enjoy this comfort.

Makerere is not unique as a university which is operating a programme of learning in a developing country where a number of key dynamics are in place. Populations are growing rapidly. The demand for health-care, basic primary and secondary education, housing, employment and food is also escalating. All universities in developing countries have to compete for resources under these conditions.

But Makerere is unique! It is the university which gave many hundreds of Asian alumni an excellent start in their lives. It is also an institution which was unable to develop and manage its relationships with its alumni who left the country in 1972. A huge ‘bank’ of goodwill and loyalty was lost at a stroke.  Alumni and university went different ways and there was no physical means of redeveloping contacts. The Internet has solved this problem for us. We have re-established long lost friendships and many of us are in contact by email almost on a daily basis.

Makerere Matters will now help its long lost alumni to rediscover Makerere, the university of their choice as many other students decided to go to Britain and other countries to gain their university education. However. Makerere also needs new friends and they will also be invited to join the Makerere family and become a part of the ‘spirit’.