For four decades, Makerere University, known as the Oxford of Africa, was the sole university-level institution in all of East Africa. A fabled Mecca for aspiring youth, it trained many of the regions first generation of intellectual and political leaders, including the present presidents of Kenya and Tanzania. It remains one of Africas most important universities today.
As one of the first comprehensive look at an African university, this book tells the story of Makereres colonial beginnings, its efflorescence during the 1950s and 1960s, its calamitous decline during nearly two decades of tyranny and civil war, and its resurgence following the restoration of peace and relative stability. Throughout this history, Makerere has grappled with the fundamental question asked in this book: how to create a truly African university in an increasingly globalized world.
Based on extensive research in libraries and archives in Africa, England, and the United States, Becoming an African University analyzes Makereres connection with East African national aspirations, its role in the formation of an African intellectual class, and its present dilemmas as it strives to become an African university of the twenty-first century.