The Gulu University Vice Chancellor (VC), also the Principal Investigator
of BSU, Professor George Openjuru Ladaah, has challenged universities to train people who can be able to create jobs and supervise others.
While recently addressing participants in a three-series webinar on “Harnessing University research and innovations for Sustainable Food Systems,” hosted by the Faculty of Agriculture and Environment (FAE) of Gulu University, the VC said the university had responsibility to solve problems in society.
He said: “We should train supervisors. We don’t have to reduce ourselves to creating people ready to be supervised. If the PhDs are looking for jobs then who will create them?”
The webinar, held on three different days under three subthemes, and supported by Gulu University, the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) and the Mastercard Foundation, attracted more than a hundred participants on each day.
The sub themes covered were: Promoting sustainable community nutrition, improving productivity for sustainable farm based micro-enterprises development and promoting agri-entrepreneurship and market participation.
The webinar provided an opportunity for several PhD and Masters students to present their research findings to the academia and the public. Their presentations were in line with the theme and sub themes of the webinar.
The students were among those supported by the Transforming African Universities to meaningfully contribute to Africa’s Growth and Development (TAGDev) project, which is managed by RUFORUM, funded by Mastercard and implemented at Gulu University in Uganda and Egerton University in Kenya.
In his remarks, Dr. Collins Okello, the Dean, Faculty of Agriculture and Environment (FAE), emphasised the need to view agriculture as a business.
He said in all its training programmes the faculty emphasises the business aspect.
“We prefer to call it agri-entrepreneurship,” he said.