India's Education Hubs To Be Established In Uganda

The Government of India has come across a plan to build three educational institutions in Uganda which will further act as a educational hub for rest of the East African Region.

The idea was finally revealed by the representatives of the Indian High Commissioner to Uganda as 275 Ugandan students, under the Pan African E-Network project, received certificated of completion of Master's , Bachelors and Post Graduate Diploma courses at the Amity University of India. . They said that these education hubs will include the India-Africa institute of Foreign Trade, a food processing incubation centre and make prior to the Testing Laboratory.

He also said "We believe that these projects will help Ugandans to acquire development skills. As India, we cheris teaching people how to fish rather than giving them fish. Uganda and India share a similar colonical and post-colonical history but because Indian prioritizes education and IT, they have progressed faster".

The revelation was well received by Ruhakana Rugunda, the Minister for information and Communication Technology. He appreciated India's continued commitment in supporting development projects in Uganda. He said "Uganda being an agricultural state needs to improve its capabilities and this can be done by providing skill development to people on Foreign trade as well as value added to the agricultural products.

However, this is not the first tip-ups among the India and Uganda. But, in 2009, Uganda signed a five-year deal with India towards the implementation of the Pan African e-network project in Uganda. The three components of this project comprised of tele-education (housed at Makerere ICT), tele-medicine (Mulago) and Very Very Important Communications [VVIC] (at state house).

For the tele-education component, Makerere University serves as the regional centre. With funding from India, a well-equipped video conferencing laboratory was established at the college of Computing and Information sciences, which the students have utilised to conduct online lessons with teachers from India.
Their success has also been the best. At every graduation, it is Amity University's policy to give out medals to the three top students in respective courses. Like last year, Ugandan students displayed great academic brilliance and trounced their African counterparts, winning six medals.