The vice Chancellor for Makerere University, professor Barnabas Nawangwe said that the Makerere university has got a strategy of enhancing distance education and providing education to more people using the online and distance mode.
Prof. Nawangwe emphasized that collaborating with the university, like the University of South Africa, is going to help them to benchmark, and also to leverage the expertise they have.
Prof. Nawangwe further said that through this partnership, the University of South Africa will work with professors at Makerere University in order to enhance capacity for distance and online education for Makerere University.
“In this partnership, the University of South Africa is also looking for the areas in which Makerere has strength, and they have identified our School of Medicine and particularly the pharmacy and the medical school as areas where we can collaborate.” Nawangwe added.
According to him, there are areas that are of mutual interest, For example, “We don’t have aeronautical engineering in Uganda, but we are beginning to have an airline. More and more people are joining the aviation industry, and we don’t have experts in Uganda, so we are going to work with the University of South Africa to begin on joint programs on things like aviation or engineering.” Nawangwe added.
“Makerere University has vast experience in getting new varieties of crops that are either resistant to drought or yield more, and so the University of South Africa is interested in all this. So I personally see a big potential and a big opportunity for us to work together to solve a lot of Africa’s problems with the University of South Africa.” Professor Nawangwe remarked.