_{By Ritah Namisango}

The Vice Chancellor, Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe has re-echoed Makerere University‘s commitment towards achieving gender parity.

“The increase of enrollment of female students in University’s undergraduate programs from less than 10 percent 20 years ago to 52% currently is a reflection of the commitment to achieving gender parity.  Noting that women constitute 52% of Uganda’s population, we are doing the right thing. We are involved in engagements to improve the number of women in the academia, research and leadership,” he said.

Prof. Nawangwe made these remarks during the Opening ceremony of the 5^th edition of the Kampala Geopolitics Conference at the Yusuf Lule Central Teaching Facility Auditorium on Tuesday 15^th November 2022. Makerere University is hosting the two-day conference (15-16^th November 2022) aimed at discussing current geopolitical questions and trends.

“We are making our humble contribution to the promotion of Human Rights and making the world a better place. We will promote the generation of knowledge through research,” he stated.

Acknowledging the fact that the 5^th edition of Kampala Geopolitics Conference brings on board 15 panels with over 80 speakers to discuss contemporary issues on health, security, climate change, human rights, gender and environment, the Vice Chancellor said Makerere University is proud to be a pioneer and partner in the Kampala Geopolitics Conference.

“We value this conference as a major avenue to disseminate our research on major national and global issues. We believe it is our responsibility as a premier African university to avail the space for intellectual discourse on issues that affect the well-being of our country, continent, and humanity,” he remarked.

Speaking at the conference, Paulina Chiwangu, the UN Women Country Representative in Uganda decried the increasing violence that is inflicted on women and girls. She pointed out the burden of teenage pregnancies.  According to Paulina Chiwangu, Africa has stalled far for too long in advancing and protecting the rights of women and girls. “We know violence against women is too high, teenage pregnancies are too high, and economically, the gaps between men and women are so wide and we are all losing because women are losing economically.”

“We need to be creative, innovative and to boldly think of our approaches to accelerate inclusive development and this is where we need more young people to engage.We really need young minds; we need you (young people) to be engaged to make Africa a better continent. As UN Women we support the implementation of sustainable development goals,” she stated.

H.E. Xavier Sticker, the Ambassador-Designate of France to Uganda said that the idea of the Kampala Geopolitics Conference came five years ago from one of his predecessors, and the idea was to partner with different stakeholders to debate on issues affecting humanity in general.

“We are here to build a common ground to identify what kind of action we can take together. We are here to listen to you and pass on your conclusions onwards in order to have that global discussion for global solutions to be found,” he said.

Nils Wörmer, the Director of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) Regional Program Security Dailogue for East Africa said that although the debate is of high quality on different topics, there is need to reach as many interested people as possible and discuss a spectrum of solutions.

“We are confident that together we shall make this year’s event a complete success like the previous events,” he said.

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