Ambiguity hangs over €160,000 Dutch aid to Makerere ICT programme

By Conan Businge

Makerere University’s acting Vice Chancellor is in the news again, but this time it is not the usual bickering of vice-chancellorship but financial mismanagement.

The current saga is of the Dutch-funded Nuffic project, in which it is alleged that the acting Vice Chancellor Prof. Venansius Baryamureeba diverted funds.

Apart from the Police taking up investigations, latest reports also indicate that the case has attracted the interest of the Auditor General.

Alleged mismanagement of the project arose after revelations that a March 4, 2008, Computing and Information Technology Appointments and Promotions Committee meeting chaired by Prof. Baryamureeba as the faculty’s dean, waived tuition fees for the 20 PhD beneficiaries yet Nuffic had disbursed €160,000 (sh512m) for the same purpose.

In this case, investigations are now into the €40,000 (about sh128m) that was budgeted as fees for the 20 PhD students and transferred annually to the accounts of the computing faculty at Makerere.

From 2007 to 2010, the Nuffic project annually sent €40,000. It was only in 2011, that €10,000 was sent as the project was winding up.

Documents seen by New Vision online show that the institutional arrangement was to annually transfer €40,000 from the Nuffic project accounts to the host institution’s accounts, in this case Makerere.

The same practice continued even after Prof. Baryamureeba ceased to be the dean of Makerere University’s Faculty of Computing and IT.

A case in point is where five PhD students were expected not to have completed by the end of the project on May 31, 2011 and as a result €10,000 was budgeted for 2011/2012 academic year. When asked by Mwalimu Prof. Baryamureeba said, “This amount of money was transferred to Makerere University faculty of ICT in 2011, long after I had ceased headship of the faculty.”

Nowadays at Makerere University, students pay tuition fees, functional fees that include all types of fees, and welfare fees. For PhD students, a lot more money is required for other academic necessities. It is common for a PhD student to print over 500 articles, buy books and use several reams of paper.

Details available to Mwalimu show that Makerere University provided some of these requirements at a cost of €20,000 (about sh64m) per year.

This, sources at Makerere say, was anticipated to be recovered from the €40,000 remitted to Makerere University Faculty of Computing and IT annually.

At the same time, tuition fees, functional fees and book allowances were being paid for the students with some of the Makerere University staff being given tuition waivers.

When Mwalimu contacted the faculty management, they argued that they gave the waivers because the €40,000 was insufficient for the PhD fees. The 20 PhD students were selected from the staff of the four participating public universities.

Prof. Baryamureeba on his part said: “These were collective decisions,” adding that the money was paid to Makerere University accounts and not his personal account.

The public universities taking part in the project were Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Kyambogo University, Gulu University and Makerere University, which was also the host institution.

The project was based in Uganda under The Netherlands Programme for Institutional Strengthening of Post-Secondary Education and Training Capacity. The lead institution in the southern hemisphere was Makerere while the lead institution for the north was the University of Groningen.

But Dr. Tanga Odoi, the academic staff boss, insists the project was messed up. “There was massive financial mismanagement. There was no need for Makerere University to waive the students’ tuition. Nuffic was sending enough money annually,” Tanga argues.

“Apart from one student who finalised from the Netherlands, the rest who studied at Makerere University have never graduated,” he adds.

Tanga says it is nothing personal against Prof. Baryamureeba, but there is need for accountability of the Nuffic funds.

“We thank the Dutch for the funding and blame ourselves for having messed up the project,” Tanga adds.

However, a number of beneficiaries described the allegations against the project as, “blackmail and baseless.”

Theodora Mwebesa Twongyeirwe, the director of Mbarara University’s Institute of Computer Science, says, “To be honest, I think these allegations are baseless.”

Twongyeirwe, who has been one of the project’s coordinators, adds that the claim that only one person graduated is false as five people have already graduated and by July this year, about 80% of the beneficiaries would have graduated.

She explains that: “The project has been very beneficial to Mbarara University’s institute in terms of capacity building”.

Dr. Geoffrey Andoga, the Dean of the Faculty of Science (Gulu University), who is one of the other beneficiaries, says, “ this was a very beneficial project and there is no doubt about it.”

“We received what the project owed us. We have no regrets and we do not see any merit in these investigations,” Dr. Andoga adds.

Prof. Baryamureeba, who was the overall coordinator in Uganda and his colleague Prof. Narbonne, the overall academic supervisor in the Netherlands hail the project as a success.

The report attributed the success to the cooperation, “of the project partners both in Uganda and in the Netherlands.”

“The support offered by the institutions in the Netherlands was great,” adds the report. The project greatly impacted on the institutions in the south in a number of areas which included educational programmes implementation, development of research capacity and training of staff in the participating universities.

It also strengthened the centre of excellence for computing and ICT training and research at Makerere University, development of ICT infrastructure at the four public Universities and pro motion of gender balance in staff and students population.

The project is also credited for having enhanced ICT awareness and promotion among the policy makers and the general public.

But not all issues went right with the project. An assessment report by Prof. Baryamureeba and Prof. Narbonne shows there was lack of budgeting, leading to failure to implement some activities.

There was also lack of timelines in missions planning, delay of procurements caused by institutional and procurement bureaucracies, and differing approaches to research of the co-supervisors in the north and south, which impacted negatively on the students’ progress.

The same report shows there were institutional hindrances which led to delay or non-implementation of activities. The project came at a time when the country needed it. Uganda’s Vision 2025 incorporates a commitment to education as a development priority.

Government’s allocations to the education sector stand at 30% of the national budget, but in reality expenditure on education is 19.4% of total Government expenditure.