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Towards the end of 2024, the Department of Political Science, School of Social Sciences, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Makerere University, received a Start-up grant from the United States Mission, Kampala to start the Great Lakes Center for the Study of the United States.
To build synergies between the professionals and scholarly communities in the United States and the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
Facilitate dialogue, professional partnerships, scholarly collaborations, and exchanges between professionals, scientists, and academics in the United States and the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
The formation of the Center is informed by the history of collaborations between the people, professionals, and scholarly communities of the United States and those of the Great Lakes Region. Specifically, the history of Makerere University reflects the long-standing relations between the US and the Great Lakes Region - aware that Makerere is the most historical University in the Region. Since the 1940s, the teaching and research in the four disciplinary cultures at Makerere University, that are Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, Humanities, and Technology have been greatly facilitated by support from the United States Government, Universities, and foundations such as Carnegie New York. For instance, in the 1960s, through the early 1970s, the different academic departments of Makerere University benefited from the scholarly competencies of the Fulbright Scholars who visited the University. The Fulbright scholars were instrumental in curriculum development and initiation of research projects. The Centre seeks to reinvent such collaborations. In other words, the Centre aims to advance the frontiers of knowledge in the four disciplinary cultures by facilitating dialogue and research collaborations between the US-based institutions and the Great Lakes-based institutions.
The Center’s research focus is guided by the truism that for civilizations to advance, synergies are supposed to be built with other civilizations. The civilization of the Great Lakes Region and Africa at large, to which Makerere University has significantly contributed during the 100 years of its existence, can be strengthened by drawing on the civilizational journey of the US. With the highest per capita scientific innovations in the world and unmatched technological advancements, the civilizational experiences of the United States can enrich Africa’s civilization(s). Also, the US’s civilization can be better sustained by building firm economic, scientific, technological, and political ties with the Great Lakes Region of Africa. For instance, the region has a growing middle class, vast fertile agricultural land, industrial potential minerals, and the world's youngest population from which the United States can tap to sustain its robust industrial revolution. The Center will thus strive to build synergies between the two civilizations.
The Center’s operational program will be anchored on three pillars:
The Research program of the Center will revolve around the notion of “Civilizational Relationality”. Under this program, several research agendas will be explored. The idea of relationality is informed by the simple logic that civilizations are nurtured and sustained by drawing and adopting good civilizational practices from elsewhere. The emphasis is that no civilization transforms on account of its strengths and experiences. Instead, experiences from other civilizations harness civilization in a given place. in the United States. Thus, the notion of relationality is the central idea of the research agenda of the Center.
To further deepen the sharing of experiences, the Center will organize periodic discussions which we put as Dialogic encounters. These encounters will be periodically organized to cover a wide range of themes that are critical to the strengthening of relations between the US and the Great Lakes Region. The research program and the dialogic encounters will be anchored on the principles of non-contradiction and non-confrontation. The center’s foundational virtue and aspiration is to build harmony and cooperation between the United States and the Great Lakes Region.
Whereas the initial research agenda and dialogic encounters will be focused on Uganda-US relations, the Center’s mandate is a regional overreach. The focus on Uganda is meant to serve as a pilot to inform regional programming and the impact canvas of the center. The Great Lakes Center at Makerere University will therefore serve as the coordination node, bringing together seven historical national Universities in the countries comprising the region, namely:
In summary, the center’s impact canvas is multi-stage. During the first year, the focus will be on streamlining the research and dialogic agenda and setting up the Secretariat of the Center. As such, during the inception period of the Center (2024/2025), a research team, comprising six researchers will be commissioned to explore the following:
The coordination team in conjunction with the US Embassy in Kampala will periodically organize dialogues, “dialogic encounters”, on issues related to the US-Great Lakes Region (Uganda) relations. The subject matter of the dialogues will always be pitched by a Guest Speaker and a panel of experts from the two sides of the dialogic encounters (that is US and Uganda).
The dialogues will punctuate the entire inception period (2024/2025) and will be critical to forging the mutual understanding between the scholarly communities in the US and the Great Lakes Region (with the initial on Uganda).
During the inception period, the Center's Secretariat will be fully constituted. The Secretariat will be charged with the execution of the day-to-day organizational activities of the proposed Center. The Secretariat will have a Coordinator who will oversee the day-to-day running of the Center. In order to guide the secretariat on how best to organize the Center, two benchmark visits will be organized. The coordination team will visit:
The projected outcome is that by the end of the inception period (2024/2025), the Secretariat at the Department of Political Science will have initiated the research agenda and dialogic encounters. During the second year (2025/2026), the coordination team will focus on devising ways through which the regional focus of the Center can be realized.
