USA Africa Dialogue Series - Harvard of Africa’ reclaims lost lustreSwedish fairy godmother helped Makerere shrug off its past

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From: Folorunso Oludayo <daydupe2003@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2013 07:21:44 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [nigerianbiomedicalandlifescientists] (unknown)
To: Nigerian Scientists
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'Harvard of Africa' reclaims lost lustre
Swedish fairy godmother helped Makerere shrug off its past
by Deborah-Fay Ndlovu
25 Feb 13
Related Links
* Sida-Makerere programme
When the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida)
began its cooperation with Uganda's Makerere University 13 years ago,
the university—once dubbed the Harvard of Africa—was in dire straits.
Successive corrupt or inefficient governments had neglected the
university's upkeep, and its buildings were rundown. Its medical
school had lost its recognition from the UK's General Medical Council.
And without modern equipment, academics—who could not conduct the
research they wanted—left the university in droves.
Today, Makerere's fortunes have changed, thanks partly to the US$68.7
million that the Swedish development cooperation agency has pumped
into it. Some of the money has paid for Makerere lecturers to obtain
PhDs and to improve the supervisory capacity of those with doctoral
degrees. It has also funded library services and research management
support.
The results have been impressive. In 1999 Makerere had only 225
lecturers with PhDs: today it has 1,212.
The training methods used by Sida have changed over time. At the
start, PhD students received sandwich training that joined Makerere
and a Swedish university, with degrees received as joint degrees with
the Swedish university or only at Makerere. But as Makerere's PhD
cohort has grown, Sida is increasingly looking to more emphasis on PhD
training programmes in the country.
Sida has also paid for infrastructure and competitive research funds
in Uganda. It provided resources for purchase of equipment and
establishing laboratories. Makerere now has cutting-edge equipment for
geographic information systems, research as well as biomedicine. For
research in a real life setting, a demographic surveillance field site
at Iganga in eastern Uganda has been set up.
Makerere's library offers countrywide access to more than 25,000 full
text journals. Sida also supports different aspects of research
management expertise.
In recent years, Makerere University has become one of the favoured
destinations of donor funding in Africa. Hannah Akuffo, lead
specialist for research at Sida's research cooperation unit, is modest
about her agency's contributions, saying Makerere itself and other
donors have played a big part as well. Still, the results speak for
themselves.
"We are proud to have contributed to an environment of making research
possible," Akuffo says.


FASINA, Folorunso Oludayo, DVM (Ibadan), MSc (Veterinary Science,
Pretoria), PhD (Pretoria)


Senior Lecturer, Section of Swine Health,
Department of Production Animal Studies ,
University of Pretoria,
Onderstepoort 0110,
South Africa.
Telephone: +27 (12) 529 8069; Cellphone: +27 719 790 042;
dayo.fasina@up.ac.za (Work email)
Nigerian Tel: +234 (0) 803 6494 772, +234 (0) 703 312 8949

Research Interest: Viral Epidemiology, Economics and Ecology, Disease
Modelling at Animal-Human Interface.


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Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

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