Scholars in the Marketplace The Dilemmas of Neo-Liberal Reform at Makerere University, 1989-2005

Mahmood Mamdani

Scholars in the Marketplace is a case study of market-based reforms at Uganda's Makerere University. With the World Bank heralding neoliberal reform at Makerere as the model for the transformation of higher education in Africa, it has implications for the whole continent. At the global level, the Makerere case exemplifies the fate of public universities in a market-oriented and capital friendly era. The Makerere reform began in the 1990s and was based on the premise that higher education is more of a private than a public good.

Instead of pitting the public against the private, and the state against the market, this book shifts the terms of the debate toward a third alternative than explores different relations between the two.

Commercialisation is Killing Makerere University

Mahmood Mamdani interviewed by Moses Mulondo in Pambazuka

MOSES MULONDO: Why have you chosen to return to Uganda?

MAHMOOD MAMDANI: In 2001 I had a meeting with President Yoweri Museveni. East African Affairs Minister Eriya Kategaya and the late James Wapakhabulo were also present. We were discussing regional issues, but at the end of the meeting I expressed concern about declining standards at Makerere University. I told the president how the commercialisation of the curriculum was undercutting the culture of research and how the university was being destroyed before our own eyes. In response, the president asked me if I would be willing to lead a visitation committee/commission of inquiry. I said I would be happy to do so.

The importance of research in a university

by Mahmood Mamdani, Pambazuka, 2011

My remarks will be more critical than congratulatory. I will focus more on the challenge we face rather than the progress we have made. My focus will also be limited, to the Humanities and the Social Sciences rather than to the Sciences, to postgraduate education and research rather than to underdgraduate education.