KAMPALA, Uganda — Makerere University is launching a plan to significantly increase its number of doctorate graduates, aiming to become a research-led institution and boost Africa’s development.
According to Vice Chancellor Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe, the university will gradually reduce its undergraduate population while increasing graduate student enrollment to 40% of the total student body, up from the current 16%.
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“Instead of staff concentrating on teaching and marking thousands of scripts for undergraduates, they will instead focus on graduate students to enable them to finish their studies in time,” Nawangwe said at a recent research workshop.
To support this shift, the university has created a separate directorate for graduate training to ensure students have the support needed to complete their studies on time. A separate directorate will focus on increasing research output and innovations.
With government funding, the university has also established an innovation “pod” to help researchers incubate data into businesses and has activated intellectual property management offices to protect researchers’ ideas.
Nawangwe said the university has lost valuable intellectual property in the past. He cited a student who developed a smartphone application that could transcribe text from a photograph but left for the United States, a move Nawangwe called a “great loss” to Uganda.
“If he had stayed here, he would be a millionaire,” Nawangwe said. “I know he was employed and given some salary but that cannot be enough.”
Nawangwe said the university is benchmarking against countries like the United States and China, whose economies are driven by research and innovation. He said Uganda currently has only 2,500 Ph.D. holders, with 1,001 at Makerere alone. He added that Africa needs to produce one million Ph.D.s in 10 years to lift people out of poverty.
“Everybody says the next growth zone of all the world is Africa but it will not happen if we don’t have a critical mass of researchers,” he said.
Nawangwe claimed that many of Uganda’s Ph.D. holders are not contributing to economic development, with only an estimated 500 actively engaged in research. He criticized the rest for “politicking and signing vouchers in ministries” instead of creating knowledge.
“I personally think that it is criminal to allow professors to become members of parliament,” he said. He added that many of the country’s universities have only one Ph.D. holder, typically the vice chancellor.
