The BSU program is probably the best thing to have happened to Gulu University.
Some people may say that I'm exaggerating, but I think it is. Because since 2011, when BSU I came into existence, it has been very supportive in terms of individual and institutional development.
We started off under SDR – that is Stability, Rights and Democracy. And Gulu University was chosen specifically because of the war that took place here in northern Uganda between 1986 and 2006. The Danish government, through the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), saw Gulu as a good place to document what happened during the war, and to study how DANIDA could support in the recovery, both at the individual level and also at the institutional level.
So, SDR was really about stability, rights and democracy. We look at these three different areas: How can we bring about stability, how can we bring about democracy, what about the issue of rights of individuals, how do we support people to advocate for their rights?
Under BSU I, one of the first ideas was to see how we could support the PhD training. I joined Gulu University in October 2009 and in and in January 2010, I became the Dean, Faculty of Education and Humanities. BSU was hosted in that faculty so by default, I became the first BSU Chair. The faculty itself was in a very bad shape, because of poor administration. I requested the Vice Chancellor, the Principal Investigator (PI) of the project, to let the coordinator continue in his role while I oversaw the project as a deputy PI. BSU was started by a group of Danish Universities so the Vice Chancellors are instrumental in this.
Under BSU I, we instituted grants that we offered to potential PhD candidates and also to people who could do research. We also had a grant put aside for study stay in Denmark. This was a new idea and people did not believe it because there had not been any other grant that could offer people to travel to Europe, and in this particular case, to Denmark, for three months, fully paid for. So, very few people actually applied. The few who applied we gave them the grants and they went. When they came back, people were surprised. ‘This BSU actually has money. It can send people abroad.’
Then we organized workshops. The biggest was a dissemination workshop. We called it “Unpacking the Stability, Rights and Democracy Concept.” Our colleagues from Kenya also participated in it.
In Kenya, DANIDA chose the Maseno University because of the skirmishes that had take place after the December 2007 presidential election. Maseno has two campuses – the main campus in Maseno town and the e-campus in Kisumu city. We partnered with Maseno because they were way ahead of us in terms of ICT. So, one of the first benefits that we got out of BSU I was training in ICT. I led a group of 10 people and we spent one week in Kisumu being trained at Maseno.
There are also those who benefited from research grants. These were given to people who had develop concept papers and were now on data collection. It was around UGX7m each but it helped them and I think they all published from that research.
For BSU, research is paramount. Under BSU II we expanded. The period was longer and there was more money. We had seen, through funding for PhD, that there were people who were making progress in their PhD studies. We offered grants to more people, and we gave them more money, up to UGX25m for data collection, and writing.
We also maintained the study stay. But the Vice Chancellor felt, instead of going for two months, maybe we should just encourage people to travel, what they call mobility. Let more people go, for one month. I think about six people went, at that time. And one of those who went, to Alborg University, Asaf Adebua, introduced to us Problem Based Learning (PBL). We have now made it one of the tools that we use for teaching here at Gulu University. So if there are any outputs from BSU II, PBL is one of them. And then, of course, the E-learning that we developed under BSU and completed under BSU II.
Maseno University helped us to develop our own Moodle which we put to good use. We paid for data and we were housing it abroad until, I think, eventually the university failed to pay and we lost most of the data. That is an old story now. But people were trained on how to use e-platforms for teaching. Also, under BSU II, I led a team to Ghana, to University of Kwame Nkuruma in Kumasi where we spend almost one week or so. We were introduced to how BSU functions there. We found that they had gone far ahead of us because they started ahead of us. We learned how they use their financial system, for accountability. We were still on Excel. They advised us to go “e” in our financial management, which is what we did.
We were able to support the administration at Gulu University in terms of training in financial management. I think the challenge we had then was, there were people who were not very keen on electronic financial management, because it would stop them from manipulating the system. We eventually ended up adopting the “e” system and that is what we using it now. Still Under BSU II, we procured the containers which now form the BSU complex. Here you find our offices and study room for graduate students, equipped with computers and reading materials.
We also supported the Institute of Research and Graduate Studies (IRGS) because we see ourselves more in the higher education, in the graduate training, rather than in undergraduate training and the pillar for that in Gulu University is the IRGS. We gave them both financial support and training for their staff. Then, we funded, and were also involved, in the writing of the graduate handbook. That was one of the great outputs that we came up with under BSU II. It is being used now, although I think we should be revising it very soon. There are many programs at IRGS that we funded, fully funded by BSU. Most of these are policies that the National Council for Higher Education wanted in place before they could accredit the new programs.
We also funded the development of all PhD and masters’ programs in the Faculty of Education and humanities, as well as in the Faculty of Business and Development Studies and I am happy to say that the PhD has finally been accredited. We have money under BSU II and BSU III that was set aside for graduate training but we were not able to attract students to benefit from the PhD grant because we didn’t have PhD accreditation. We were able to grant study stay, data collection funds, completion but it was limited because the numbers were few. The starting of masters has now put us in a better light in the sense that those who will graduate with masters from Gulu can now benefit from the PhD program.
From BSU II, mainly, we have number of PhD and some are still in the pipeline. So for us, we see this as a big boost. When I joined the faculty of Education and Humanities there was hardly anybody with a PhD. There was no professor; everybody was on the same level. There were mostly high school teachers who had been brought in, some already in their late 50s, and they were not interested in doing graduate training anymore. They just would teach, like high school, go home and back, like that. But now with the younger generation coming up, almost every department has a master's program funded by BSU. So that is made a difference. Then also with ICT, I think we made a substantial investment in the bandwidth, which has kept the university going, of course, it has now been supported by other people. But at the initial stage it was really BSU. When there were conferences, these annual conferences, most of them were funded under BSU, or at least with substantial support from BSU.
Under BSU III, we gradually moved from individual researches to collaborative researches, with our Danish partners, and we are looking at the three areas basically: Education, Gender, and Resources. We set aside budget lines for each of these three major areas. People formed groups, and they wrote their budgets. We said okay, up to 25 million, for a period of one year or six months depending on how people were working. These different groups set out to do their own research. Then Covid-19 interrupted most of the work. But we are still holding on. These groups are still together. Some of them have really made significant progress, like the green charcoal project, the education project, several project are now progressing.
I think, not in very many words, BSU has made a significant contribution towards individual and institutional development in Gulu. There are areas where we can say YES, we have left footprints, and those footprints will not be wiped off very easily. There are also people who are jealous of what we are doing because they have got grants but these grants are not showing results as some of ours. Our people are publishing, those who have finished and even those have not finished, and it is attributed to funding from BSU. I think we have to be very proud.
Prof. Charles Nelson Okumu has been Chair of the BSU steering committee since the inception of the project
