Scholar blames World Bank for low university standards

Renowned scholar Professor Mahmood Mamdani has blamed the World Bank for the poor quality of university education in Uganda and across Africa. Mamdani particularly attributed Makerere University's current woes and fading glory to the World Bank’s ill-fated structural adjustment policies on education, writes Francis Kagolo for The New Vision.

He said the bank ill-advised African governments, Uganda included, to shift investment from higher education and focus on primary education in the 1980s. He said the policy did not only kill higher education but also murdered the quality of primary education.

According to Mamdani: “The World Bank convinced the government that university education was not only elitist but a luxury that society could not afford.”

As a result, the government focused on primary education and left universities to be funded mainly by the students’ families through the private sponsorship scheme.

“The logic was elegant but populist and faulty,” Mamdani said. “It has had disastrous consequences for higher education, not just in Uganda but wherever it has been applied in Africa.”

He made the remarks during the fourth lecture of the Makerere University Africa lecture series.
Full report on the All Africa site