Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni has urged educators and academicians to lead the resistance against the attack on African identity.
Museveni said this at the first National Symposium on National Transformation, hosted this year by Makerere University Council, themed, ‘The role of universities in responding to Africa’s problems and development needs’.
The symposium took place at the Food Science and Technology Conference hall, Makerere University.
He added that the education system at university must put confidence back into the African people, but now because of the colonial thinking, blackness is frowned on.
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In a speech read by Vice President, Jessica Alupo, Museveni also urged all educators to emphasis to their learners the crucial importance of large markets in bringing about transformation and development.
Keynote speaker, Vincent Anigbogu, director, Institute for National Transformation International, said a value-based education is important for nurturing the necessary integrity for bringing about social transformation.
Anigbogu noted that many of Africa’s universities are still at the first- generation or second-generation phase with just a few transiting into the third- generation phase.
Explaining how the social-impact university operates and relates, he gave an example of how Cambridge University transformed the Cambridgeshire county around it, hence the new concept of ‘Cambridge phenomenon’.
He added that university structures and systems have to be reformed and academicians be incentivized (through evaluation and promotion) to transition to the social-impact university, the university of the 21st century.
