General
Ambassador Marantis delivers public lecture on Trade and Investment
“Thank you very much for welcoming me to Makerere University. I am here today as Deputy United States Trade Representative representing President Obama’s Administration on my first trip to Uganda.” Remarked Ambassador Demetrios Marantis as he kicked off his Public Lecture on U.S. – Africa Trade and Investment in the 21st Century, held at the Food Science and Technology Conference Hall on February 16th 2010.
“Thank you very much for welcoming me to Makerere University. I am here today as Deputy United States Trade Representative representing President Obama’s Administration on my first trip to Uganda.” Remarked Ambassador Demetrios Marantis as he kicked off his Public Lecture on U.S. – Africa Trade and Investment in the 21st Century, held at the Food Science and Technology Conference Hall on February 16th 2010.
He intimated that this trip was a culmination of a twenty year journey, which began while, he was researching a paper on philanthropic foundations and the development of higher education in Africa focused on Makerere University. The Ambassador could not hide his sense of fulfillment at finally visiting this center of excellence, which groomed many African leaders like Presidents Mwai Kibaki and Joseph Kabila including former President Mwalimu Julius Nyerere. However, he could not help but reveal that his mind was full of questions about the future of trade and investment between Africa and the United States, which formed the basis of his trip.
Talking about the opportunities created by the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) , Ambassador Marantis couldn’t help but notice that over the last eight years, U.S.-sub-Saharan African trade had more than doubled, a feat he hoped would improve even further with the establishment a regional American trade competitiveness hub in Nairobi ; funded by USAID, where Ugandans can receive AGOA-related training and technical assistance.
Referring to the challenges faced in the past, especially the global economic crisis, the Ambassador offered his assurance “I am committed to working with you to get things right. Together we can find the right economic policies, the right trade policies, and the right solutions for Uganda’s and America’s mutual prosperity.” He also mentioned his participation in the first-ever council meeting under the U.S.-East African Community (EAC) Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) the previous day, which he hoped would deepen U.S. economic engagement and cooperation with Uganda and the other four members of the EAC.
After His Excellency’s remarks, Prof. Ddumba-Ssentamu, who chaired the Question and answer session thanked the Ambassador for his commitment to putting in place policies that would foster development, and reiterated that indeed, Trade and Investment were the way forward for Africa and Uganda in particular in as far as achieving economic growth was concerned.
Reacting to questions about the American Government continuing to offer subsidies to its farmers while on the other hand promoting AGOA and doing nothing tangible to help Uganda farmers actually diversify their exports, Ambassador Marantis admitted that AGOA had indeed registered as many challenges as it had successes. He acknowledged that one of these was the competitiveness of African products versus those from Asia, which have a lower cost of production and transportation. However, he emphasized that AGOA is only one such initiative of the American Government, with others aimed at different sectors like Transportation and Health.
With Uganda’s diversity of wildlife and unique climate in mind, a student from the Faculty of Economics and Management wanted to know what policies were in place to help Uganda profit from tourism. In response Ambassador Marantis revealed that he had only learnt that Uganda had unique tourist activities like gorilla trekking , mountain climbing and white water rafting after visiting for the first time. As such, he stressed that Uganda as a country needs to a better job of marketing itself on the tourism front so as to fully exploit this almost untapped sector.
A discussant who admitted to not hearing a lot about investment from the Ambassador’s talk was curious as to how the U.S. trade and investment strategy would eventually map out. The Ambassador used this opportunity to stress the goal of the TIFA, which was to enable Investors in the U.S. become aware of trade and investment opportunities, while at the same time helping its EAC counterparts to learn of American opportunities. He however noted that this was also based on the African countries creating an overall climate that is friendly to trade. He cited the example of the US-Rwanda Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) , signed in 2008 after favorable conditions of investment had been put in place by the Rwandan Administration.
The session got livelier, with the Ambassador appreciating the brilliance of the audience as he was often awed by the Students’ comments and questions. He however, urged the students to exploit the opportunities offered by Makerere University so that they could provide the much needed capacity in terms of policy making and implementation. He also counseled that it was not up to the U.S. to decide Africa’s path. He opined that Africa needed to identify its potential strengths, prioritize them, and exploit them fully so as to benefit from opportunities like AGOA. He discouraged the concept of “protectionalism” noting that countries like Vietnam were only able to experience exponential growth, after opening up their economies fully, and providing a conducive environment for investment. When put to task as to why American researchers and companies went ahead to patent those products manufactured as a result research done in Africa, which made accessing them expensive eventually, the Ambassador had to admit that whereas it was a delicate issue to deal with, there had been gradual progress made at striking a balance between not patenting so that that the eventual products are cheaper and patenting so that research-based companies and organizations might benefit from their investments.
Prof Ikoja-Odongo, who represented the Acting Vice-Chancellor Prof. Venansius Baryamureeba , thanked Ambassador Demetrios Marantis for delivering his inaugural lecture at Makerere and admitted that though it was a lively debate, the Ambassador was more at the receiving end of questions that should have been directed at Ugandan policy and decision makers. He concluded the lecture by encouraging the students to take on the Ambassadors challenge and become the much-needed professionals that they demand of this country. “Empowerment should enable you to go back to your community and put into practice what you learnt for the benefit the people” he said.
Click here to for full lecture document
The Senior Program Director, Higher Education and Research in Africa, International Program, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Prof. Omotade Akin Aina on 23rd May 2025 visited Makerere University during his short trip to Kampala. Prof. Aina was received on behalf of the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe by Prof. Tony Oyana, Principal of the College of Computing and Information Sciences (CoCIS).
During his visit, Prof. Aina met with the Project Implementation Committee, representatives from the Consolidating Early Career Academics Programme (CECAP) phase I Fellowship Cohort, and current Fellows of phase II. The meeting discussed the progress of CECAP II, which focuses on fostering academic development and research among early-career academics.
CECAP II is being implemented by Makerere University in collaboration with four other Ugandan public universities, including; Busitema University, Gulu University, Kyambogo University and Mbarara University of Science and Technology. Prof. Mukadasi Buyinza, the Project Principal Investigator was represented at the meeting by the Director of Graduate Training, Prof. Julius Kikooma.
By Moses Lutaaya
The Directorate of Graduate Training at Makerere University has equipped several Senior ranking lecturers with expert knowledge in a Training of Trainers’ workshop on “Philosophy of Methods”.
In his remarks at the opening of a 3-day training workshop at Level4 Conference Hall – Senate Building, the Director of Graduate Training Prof. Julius Kikooma said, “The teaching of Philosophy of Methods gives all participants the fundamentals to extend knowledge to other learners, hence its importance in upholding the Makerere University values.”
Kikooma urged and challenged the participants to also attend and actively participate in the follow up of learners’ training of students, stating that the PhD students need support as the directorate continues to coordinate the curriculum of PhD by-research that was approved by the senate recently.
“To holistically implement the senate approved PhD curriculum, we are coordinating capacity building trainings of all stake holders in a structured approach with the different units of the University. Many more trainings including Training of Trainers in advanced research methods course are on the way.”
He further urged the participants to be intentional in their teaching profession and in whatever they were doing, adding “Apart from focusing on practices as teachers and researchers, we can engage in wider philosophical debates in our research areas so that we are relevant in the society and in the empowerment of PhD research students.”
The participants for the Philosophy of Methods training were from College of Humanities and Social Sciences, College of Education and External Studies, Makerere University Business School among others.
During the same training, Dr. Dickson Kanakulya stressed the need to train senior lecturers in the Philosophy of Methods, saying, “The biggest connection is that societal problems require concrete research to find solutions. Our challenge in Africa is that we employ a short barrow approach to find solutions to problems. This cannot work. We need consistent researchers to solve problems. Lasting solutions to societal issues can only be got through training such as Philosophy of Methods, where researchers come up with new models for societal solutions.”
Dr. Kanakulya said that Makerere University remains the biggest research University in Africa and philosophy of Methods helps to come up with good research tools that produce good research outputs. “Research has shown that the higher the number of PhD researchers in any given country, the higher the levels of development of that country e.g. the USA, China etc., adding that research is not limited to only medicinal or agricultural related issues.”
He said philosophy of methods, encourages philosophical creativity in research, “It is meant to bring out philosophical generation of concepts, theories and ideas. It is meant to encourage students to question the existing philosophical assumptions and status quo in a given field of knowledge such that new philosophical concepts are created.”
For successful rollout of government programs like the National Development Plan 4, Dr. Kanakulya said that Philosophy of Methods training needs to be integrated into such systems. “Philosophy of Methods focuses on ethical thinking aspects. For example, for a better rollout of the Parish Development Model, we need implementers to be ethical.” He added.
Prof. Sulait Tumwiine, the associate Dean of Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research at MUBS said, “This is a discussion where new ideas are shared to guide and gauge applicability in the current knowledge diversity coupled with lots of technological development including Artificial Intelligence and Chat GPT.”
He added, “As professors of Universities, we need to understand how we leverage on what comes up so that it does not take our space, but also appreciate how we can support growth of knowledge. The Philosophy of Methods training is the answer.”
Dr. Jim Spire Ssentongo highlighted that Philosophy uses more of the critical mind than Science. He added that philosophy is more of speculation of the mind.
“Sustainability of philosophy Education encourages us to continue training. Philosophy being the oldest discipline retained special status in the academia as a pinnacle of pursuit of knowledge. All disciplines have major elements of philosophy citing examples in the philosophy of Mathematics and Physics.
Dr. Spire added, “If you do not understand philosophy, you cannot deeply investigate anything because philosophy is the reality of understanding everything. Philosophy is the basis of understanding what knowledge is and how it is arrived at.”
Also participating in the workshop was Prof. Joseph Ntaayi from MUBS, in his remarks he said PhD students need the philosophy of methods training to understand how to best to create knowledge. He added that ontological and epistemological questions that lead to good research design methods can only be answered by this training.
Dr. Robert Kakuru, a Lecturer in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences said that the Philosophy of Methods training is needed by every graduate student as well as supervisors to critically determine the choice of methods to use in academic research. For example, “If one wants to use a questionnaire as an interview approach, one should understand, why that approach and yet without this training, the why cannot be answered.” He added.
The Philosophy of Methods training was organized by Directorate of Graduate Training with funding support from the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA).
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