On Thursday 5thNovember, 2020, a project titled Enhancing Capacities of Women to Leadership Positions in Universities in Uganda (WOLEP) held a Dissemination Event at Makerere University. The Principal Investigator (PI) of the WOLEP project is Dr. Florence Nakamanya, Lecturer, East African School of Higher Education Studies and Development (EASHESD), College of Education and External Studies. The project team members are Assoc. Prof. Ronald Bisaso and Ms. Sharon Ainmbabazi. The event started with a prayer led by Sr. Bernadette Lutaaya. The Dean, EASHESD, Assoc. Prof. Ronald Bisaso who was the moderator welcomed members to the dissemination and gave a preamble of the WOLEP project.
L-R Mrs.Harriet Adong Communications Officer RIF, Assoc.Prof.Ronald Bisaso Dean East African School of Higher Education CEES, Dr.Nakamanya Florence Principal Investigator, Ms.Ainmbabazi Sharon Project member.
The event attracted a number of distinguished personalities who attended both physically and online. In online attendance were; Prof. Joy C. Kwesiga, the Vice Chancellor of Kabale University and the Guest of Honour, Prof. William Bazeyo, the Chairperson, Makerere University Research and Innovations Fund (RIF), Prof. Charles Masembe, Member of the Grants Management Committee, RIF, Prof. Fred Masagazi Masaazi, the Principal, College of Education and External Studies (CEES), Ms. Harriet Adong, Head, Communication, RIF, Prof. Monica Chibita, Dean, Faculty of Journalism, Media and Communication, Uganda Christian University (UCU), Assoc. Prof. Betty Ezati, Dean, School of Education, Makerere University and Member of the Grants Management Committee, RIF. In the physical meeting, we had the project team members, women leaders from Ugandan Universities including Makerere University, Kyambogo University, Ndejje University, Kampala International University, St. Lawrence University, Al-Mustafa Islamic College and female employees from the National Planning Authority among others.
Zoom Attendence From Top L-R Project PI Dr.Nakamanya Florence, Prof. Masembe Charles, Prof.William Bazeyo RIF Chairperson Grants management Committee, Ms.Sylvia Nakirya participant, Prof.Fred Masagazi Masaazi Principal CEES.
Dr. Florence Nakamanya the PI in her presentation highlighted that the project was made possible with funding from the Government of the Republic of Uganda through Makerere University Research and Innovations Fund (RIF). The PI noted that there exists leadership training programmes aimed at building capacities of female leaders in different parts of the world including Uganda. However, the numbers of women in leadership positions are still miserably low. For instance, we have only three female Vice Chancellors in Uganda and yet there are over 50 universities. Besides, the leadership training programmes provided are adhoc in nature, they are developed in the western world and adapted to African context, do not meet the current and emerging needs and largely depend on the availability of funding. This then created the need for the WOLEP project.
She enlisted the objectives the project as follows;
1. To analyze the leadership-related training programs (LTPs) that women in leadership positions in universities in Uganda have attended.
2. To establish the leadership-related competence profile for women in leadership positions in universities in Uganda.
3. To investigate whether the existing leadership-related training programmes influence women’s aspirations and progression to leadership training positions in universities in Uganda.
4. To examine women’s experiences with the existing Leadership-related Training Programs in universities in Uganda.
5. To identify the capacity needs and what works for women to occupy leadership positions in universities in Uganda.
The WOLEP project employed an interpretive approach to research because the team wanted to get an in-depth understanding of the issue that was under investigation. The participants of the project included the incumbent and aspiring female leaders. The Incumbents comprised of senior female leaders like Vice Chancellors, the middle leaders (Deputy Principals and Deans), the lower leaders such as examination and research coordinators. The aspiring female leaders constituted any female academic member of staff in the university. The participants were purposively selected on the basis that they had ever attended a leadership-related training programmes and were drawn from the different categories of Ugandan Universities. The universities were categorized into public, private religious-affiliated and private-for-profit universities. Data were collected through interviewing 29 participants comprising of 2 (senior female leaders), 9 (middle female leaders), 9 (lower female leaders) and 9 (aspiring female leaders).
The findings of the study include;
Objective One, where different leadership-related programs were analyzed: It was discovered that the participants had attended international leadership-related programs. Whereas the senior female leaders had participated in programs organized by the Commonwealth, Higher Education Resources Services, Inter-University Council of East Africa, RUFORUM, the middle female leaders highlighted trainings such as the International Deans’ Course, COACH AFRICA, workshops in South Africa and Finland. Importantly, the international trainings were attended by mostly participants at all levels of leadership from the public universities. The middle female leaders had attended national leadership-related trainings particularly those organized by the National Council of Higher Education whereas the lower and aspiring female leaders had mostly participated in internal institutional trainings
Objective Two which was about the competence profile of female leaders: She said that during the interviews, the participants shared competences related to leadership and management, teaching and research. Specifically, competences related to pedagogy, curriculum, research, social challenges, customer care, ICT, confidence building, team work, conflict resolution among others. She asked participants to reflect on how they teach and supervise graduate students in higher education.
Objective Three on whether the existing leadership-related training programmes influenced women’s aspirations and progression to Leadership: The female leaders shared that the training enabled them to acquire knowledge, share experiences, provided opportunities for personal professional development and networking. In-depth analysis had confirmed that the female leaders’ experiences with the existing leadership-related training programmes influenced their desire to aspire and progress to academic and administrative leadership positions in Ugandan universities. For example, a female senior leader serving in a public university had said that “we are always given an opportunity to share experiences in the leadership training programs. I ask colleagues and they would tell me how to solve it. I would get tips that I learn which makes me perform better in my work.”
Objective Four focused on experiences with leadership-related training programmes: The focus was on the programme structure, stakeholder involvement and post-training experiences. The participants shared that the content provided in the trainings was too broad, theoretical and delivered in a very short period of time and yet very costly. She noted that there was limited stakeholder involvement, the training needs analysis was hardly done and there was unclear selection process. It was also found out that most of the leadership-related training programs that female leaders attend in Ugandan universities lacked the aspect of mentorship and did not make follow-ups. In view of this, achievement of the intended outcomes was constrained.
Objective Five identified the Capacity Needs for female leaders: The findings showed that the female incumbent and aspiring leaders would like to be capacitated in areas including networking and mentorship, research and publishing as well as leadership and management skills.
The study concluded that:
1. Female leaders had attended International, National, and Institutional LTPs.
2. The competence profile of female leaders comprised of leadership and management, teaching and research skills developed from the training programmes.
3. LTPs had influenced women’s desire to aspire and progress to leadership positions.
4. LTPs were too costly, theoretical with broad content, with limited stakeholders’ involvement, no follow up and lacked mentorship opportunities.
5. Networking, mentorship, research and publishing as well as leadership and management skills were the capacity needs of incumbent and aspiring female leaders in Ugandan Universities.
The study recommended that:
1. Continuous Professional Development should be rolled out both incumbent and aspiring female leaders. The modularized programme that has been developed out of the current study will span a reasonable period of time and will be flexibly delivered using blended training approaches at the East African School of Higher Education Studies and Development, Makerere University.
2. Universities should initiate sustainable networking platforms that provide avenues for incumbent and aspiring leaders to share experiences, challenges and new insights on how to perform their duties through periodic meetings and reflective seminars that could be flexibly organized or delivered using online technologies and social learning platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Zoom etc.
3. The Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development and other relevant stakeholders should collaboratively initiate and support robust structured mentorship programmes for women in higher education where those with rich experience are invited to share their life stories which could be published in different formats like videos and used to continually nurture aspiring leaders and equally enhance women’s progression to leadership
The study proposed an intervention/solution/ programme informed by a range of capacity needs that were highlighted by women at the different levels of leadership. The two modules developed to be flexibly delivered are:
1.Leadership and Management in Higher Education
2.Career Advancement of Women in Higher Education
The PI shared a quote by Sheryl Sandberg: “If more women are in leadership roles, we’ll stop assuming they shouldn’t be”.
In her welcome remarks, Prof. Joy Kwesiga the Guest of Honour congratulated the project team on the important research in which she participated and that she had been looking forward to the general research results. She highlighted that there was a minimal number of females that participate in higher education leadership. She shared her past experience while serving in Makerere University and expected the findings to trigger reflection on how to increase the number of women in leadership positions through established policies, support mechanisms and practices. Prof. Kwesiga noted that when the only female presidential candidate Nancy Kalembe said that females are going to break the glass ceiling and that becoming president was one of them, her mind was drawn to the importance of gender perspectives in leadership and management, in teaching, and research. Finally, she said she was glad that the study had been successfully conducted and that it would open up into a wider field so that we can have specialists.
Prof. Fred Masagazi Masaazi the Principal CEES, in his remarks, congratulated the lead researcher Dr. Nakamanya Florence and the research team for reaching the milestone. He said that, whereas research was a booster to our academic endeavors, it was also a springboard for opening up space for national development. He further said that he strongly believed that the findings would go a long way in informing gender policy and other aspects related to gender and Higher Education. He also thanked the Dean, East African School of Higher Education Studies and Development (EASHESD), for the support in ensuring that EASHESD contributes to the body of knowledge, and for impacting on the College’s visibility. He further thanked the RIF team for the support and for identifying and funding the special area of study on enhancing capacities of women to leadership positions in universities. He concluded by noting that young researchers like Dr. Nakamanya were pillars for the University’s development.
Prof. Charles Masembe, Member of the RIF Grants Management Committee in his speech welcomed the participants noting that they had been drawn from different universities and organisations. He thanked them for making time to attend the dissemination. He thanked the researchers and innovators for their tireless efforts. In a special way, he thanked the Government of Uganda for the continued support to Makerere University and for funding research through RIF. He further said that for a country to move from lower income status to middle income status, it needs research. In addition, he said that RIF is aimed at complementing available research funding to address unfunded priorities critical to accelerating development across different sectors of the economy in Uganda. He was happy that the WOLEP project had unearthed the capacity needs of the different categories of female leaders including; the aspiring, the lower, middle and top-level leaders. He implored the project team to partner with a range of stakeholders to address the capacity needs as they roll out the project’s proposed training programme.
Prof. William Bazeyo Chairperson RIF Grants Management Committee (GMC), thanked the organizers for the Dissemination. He highlighted that this was the first dissemination he had attended ever since RIF started. He congratulated Dr. Florence Nakamanya and her team. He thanked the Principal, Professor Masagazi for supporting research efforts in the College of Education and External Studies. He noted that he believed in negotiation and he challenged every researcher to become a negotiator and through negotiation, ensure research uptake by the policy makers. He noted that since Makerere has the capacity and the negotiation skills, it should do better. He also acknowledged the contributions of other teams on RIF1 and RIF2. He announced that RIF3 had been approved. He emphasized that RIF3 will not be the same as RIF2 and RIF1. He said RIF1 was UGX 30 billion, RIF2 was UGX 30 billion, COVID Response UGX 9.3 billion but that he had negotiated higher for RIF3 and it will be higher, if not double.
He informed participants that he was also negotiating on how Makerere University (MAK) can support other universities to do research, emphasizing that MAK had built capacity and was now prepared to build capacity for other universities. He was already negotiating for funds so that MAK can build research capacity for other universities. He cited an example of a model university in Malaysia which was leading in research and had been funded to support research and capacity building in other public universities. Furthermore, he re-echoed the need of researchers to reach out to stakeholders and different ministries to share research findings. He called upon all researchers to begin writing policy briefs. He finally set a challenge to his colleagues on the GMC to start a programme to train researchers on how to write policy briefs.
