Fellow Ugandans,
On the education scene our beef ought not be with the scholarly pursuits of any East African group but rather with our own government’s policies and seriousness regarding education. If Pres. Kagame of Rwanda is aggressive enough to obtain scholarships for his people let us applaud his efforts- because he is one of a few African leaders next to Botswana’s president who have recognized the power of education. He visits and empowers his students religiously every year, he gets an A+ in this regard.
I truly believe that if we managed our affairs well, we will have enough jobs to last us several decades. This favouring of one group over another, like the way Banyankole are favoured in Uganda, may have just a slight advantage, but it surely does not auger well for the development of the region.
Our contention ought to be with our own leadership on this matter, for a country on a development path we have not shown the necessary aggressiveness that is called upon to close the apparent gaps in education-this might well be what has long deterred our progress. In the last 20 years I have seen very few Ugandan Students both at Harvard and MIT-Yet these are the centres that have fuelled the Asian development machinery. I have seen more students from Rwanda as well as Zimbabwe. To date we have just one student pursuing her PHD in Electrical Engineering and perhaps a couple at Harvard doing their masters.
The scantiness of these numbers during the past 23 years speaks to the approach and perhaps policies not pursued that would have put us as a nation on a clear path of progress. I can only urge our president to begin to recognize that the ills with AGOA and other initiatives that have not taken off-during his tenure are self inflicted. Indeed to stop selling raw materials you have to have an Industrial Engineering major at our Universities, to stop posturing as the garment sellers for India for purposes of Agoa, you need Textile Engineers and machinery to work your textile factories, and please do not let the life science boom pass us by. Many have profited from re-engineering herbs/medicines that are from our own land; and now that we have OIL there will be a need for both plastic Engineers and Chemical Engineers and this needs to be proactively catered for now.
Tendo Kaluma
