The Makerere university council led by its Chair Mrs Lorna Magara on March 2, 2023 visited the college to introduce the new members of the university council and also get acquainted with the operations of the college and how CoBAMS aligns with the University’s strategic goals.
The college management team, led by the Principal Prof. Eria Hisali shared with the council members what the college is doing to align its self to the Strategic Plan (2020-2030) which aims to transform Makerere into a research-led University, responding to national, regional and global development challenges, as well as contributing to global knowledge generation.
The Principal informed the council that the college gives out small grants to different researchers within the college as well as encourages others to apply for external grants. It also encourages publications and has various avenues for dissemination such as seminar series and the policy labs.
Prof. Hisali informed the meeting that the college has established an endowment fund in an effort to improve its financial position.
The council members learnt that the college had written a proposal for infrastructure development to the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic development. The proposal is at Development Committee level. The college is optimistic about its funding.
The council members pledged to support the college and advised the leadership to register the PIM centre of excellence as an independent organization with legal status.
Other developments the Principal shared included;
- The MA Economics students from the College emerged the overall best of the seven participating Universities at the Joint Facility for Electives with an average CGPA of 3.83 out of a maximum of 4.00. This speaks to the quality of our offerings.
- Accreditation of BCOM by ACCA Global. Graduates of the Bachelor of Commerce Program now have eight out of the possible nine exemptions.
- Partnership with Prudential Assurance Uganda Limited. This gives a cash prize of $500 dollars to each of the best five final year students on the Program. Even more importantly, they are offered a full scholarship to pursue the professional Actuarial program.
- Development of a College based students’ enrolment system in order to improve decision making and service delivery. We are sensitizing students to enroll starting this Semester.
- The College also completed a partnership through which the best performing MA Economics Student is absorbed as a Research Fellow at the EPRC
- Graduate fellows recruited for all the Departments. These are proving very helpful in supporting students to appreciate concepts in smaller groupings.
- The College Endowment Fund. We have continued to grow the Fund and currently stand at around 100,000 dollars. We plan to launch in order to pave way for the public and well-wishers to contribute.
- Infrastructure project. The College has gone through the gate keeping requirements and the feasibility report is now at DC of MFPED.
- EAC support towards ICT equipment for the School of Statistics and Planning worth USD$500,000.
- The Government of Uganda took over support to the Public Investment Management Center at the College starting 2022/2023.
- We are also supporting efforts to develop an implementation roadmap for the PDM
- Researchers at the College have continued to win competitive research grants
- The publication record at the College has improved considerably from around 30 publications annually to over 120 for the year 2022.
- Community engagements and outreach through the EfD, Entrepreneurship Center, PIM Center, etc.
- Revamping of the College website as part of plans to improve visibility of the College
- Short term capacity building for the administrative and support staff of the College
- We have finalized discussions on the work process flows and are now due for discussion at the College Administrative Board
- The College obtained full accreditation of its REC from the National Council for Science and Technology.
- The School of Economics has been selected to host the Annual Centre for the Study of African Economies Conference by the University of Oxford. This is the second time it will be hosted on the African continent and will take place between 27th and 30th November 2023.
- The School of Economics is engaging Amazon with regard to skilling in the field of Machine Learning
- The School of Business has finalized plans to host a Public Lecture on 4th April 2023 on the theme, “Corporate Governance as a business competitive strategy, consolidating gains and advancing prospects in Africa’s Market”.
