Dialogue in Pursuit of Development - Are you looking for one of ...

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Increasingly, literature and research addressing and analyzing donor/recipient
relations (Hudock, 1995; Wallace, et al, 1997) indicate the importance of
situating the analysis within the context and environment that the relationship
develops.
This chapter is divided into five sections. Section one gives the contextual
background. The aim is to equip the reader with an understanding of
the Rockefeller/Makerere University funding relationship. The second section
covers the dialogue during the grant application. Section three deals
with the unique process of managing the Rockefeller grant. While in section
four, I give my personal reflections and analysis of this relationship as
someone who has been involved in this new and emerging funding relationship
between Rockefeller Foundation 4 and Makerere University right
from the start. In section five, as a way of looking at the challenges facing
the relationship, some anxieties on both sides are tabled. This concluding
section also looks at what can be learned from the Makerere University/
Rockefeller Foundation relationship.
At the core of the chapter is a set of questions. What is behind this relationship?
To what extent is the Rockefeller funding influencing Makerere
University’s agenda or threatening the University’s autonomy to set its own
agenda? What are the ingredients of the relationship? What lessons can be
learned? The nature of the relationship that is emerging is discussed in terms
of its originality, accountability, legitimacy and empowerment. My position
is that this negotiated relationship is yielding remarkable outcomes and has
the attributes of a partnership. Makerere University is not passive in the
partnership but moving from unplanned change to strategically charting its 5
future.
Background
Makerere University enjoyed the reputation as a leading university in Africa
in the pre and post independence periods. The country fell apart when Idi
Amin came to power, and with it, the university crumbled. The 1970s witnessed
dramatic insecurity, a near total collapse of the economy and a curtailment
of human rights. University professors and teaching staff left Uganda
for better-paid jobs, security for themselves and their families and a healthier
4 Rockefeller Foundation continues to fund programmes at faculty levels, e.g. Faculties of Agriculture
and Medicine while at the same time engaged in this Institutional Capacity Building funding
arrangement.
5 I am grateful that I was invited to write this chapter and consequently forced to step back and
reflect on a relationship I am currently centrally involved in. The Rockefeller and my Makerere
colleagues’ assessment, experience and accounts may differ from what I present here, but I write in
my capacity as elected Executive Secretary of the Innovations at Makerere Committee.