Some time back, there was anxiety at Makerere University after the Swedish donors announced that the billions coming underSwedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) wouldn’t be available any more. But the central government has acted swiftly to ensure the Swedish exit, taking effect after 2020, doesn’t cripple the smooth running of the country’s premier University. According to Makerere Vice Chancellor Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe, government will effective the FY2019/2020 be allocating an additional Shs30bn to Makerere specifically to fill the research funding gap the Swedish exit will be creating at the Ivory Tower. The VC made the revelations during the Makerere University-Sweden Bilateral Research Cooperation’s annual planning meeting for research support to Uganda held at the University. Nawangwe is grateful with the government decision to immediately allocate Shs30bn to support research at Makerere University.
The GoU is responding to the end of the 20 year collaborative partnership between Makerere University and SIDA. The Swedish government had injected up to $105m (roughly Shs392bn) in the different Public Universities in Uganda as of December 2018. Uganda Radio Network quotes Swedish Ambassador to Uganda Per Lindgarde as saying that the current research grant running until June 2020 is the final phase of the program. Activities under this phase rotate around 17 projects spread across teaching and the service units in a network that includes five Ugandan public universities and 11 Swedish universities as well as research institutes. URN further quotes Lindgarde as noting that the partnership was aimed at increasing the capacity of Makerere and other public universities in Uganda to generate knowledge and promote capacity for research required for national development. He appealed to the Ugandan government to embrace research as it would help in developing clear action plans and intervention programs directly connected to promoting economic growth and improving people’s livelihoods.
Research-related activities (in the FY2017/2018) cost Makerere University an estimated Shs1.3bn while only Shs743m was provided for the FY2018/2019. SIDA has been a primary source of funding for training of researchers and research in Uganda under a bilateral research collaboration programme initiated in 2000. This collaboration has given birth to a myriad of collaborations between Makerere University and other 12 universities in Sweden. “We have learnt best practices from these Universities and also benefited from joint supervision which has ensured quality graduates,” Prof. Nawangwe discloses. According to Prof. Nawangwe, the trained staffs need to do research, arguing that the research funding is currently inadequate to utilize the available force of academicians and researchers in the country. “A number of our staff have received PhD training through SIDA funding. I’m happy to report that since 2000 when our cooperation began, over 250 staff have completed PhDs; 100 masters and 50 post-doctoral fellows have completed their programs,” Prof Buyinza Mukadasi, the Director of Research and Graduate training at Makerere University said. Through the same cooperation, Prof. Buyinza observes that there has been a steady increase in the capacity to conduct research in other public universities including Busitema, Kyambogo, Mbarara University of Science and Technology –MUST especially through training of staff in supervision, mentorship, research management and grant proposal writing. Dr. Gity Behran, the Swedish First Secretary for Research and Cooperation in Uganda, discloses that as an aid agency, they don’t intend to substitute the role of government by ensuring funding for research is met. According to Prof. Buyinza, the withdrawal of the Swedish funders continues to worry Makerere University. He notes that while government has committed Shs30bn for research, the money required is much more. Buyinza says he is currently heading a team at Makerere that is studying key activities that the Swedish funds have been supporting to identify the vacuum and present them to government for funding.
