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Articles

Vol. 17 No. 1-2 (2025)

Africanisation of Adult Education at Makerere University College in the 1960s

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70060/mak-mawazo-2025-235
Submitted
March 26, 2026
Published
December 31, 2025

Abstract

Africanisation was a major concern of post-independence in East Africa, and particularly in Uganda, its pursuit at Makerere University College was deliberate in the 1960s. While it was a major preoccupation of nationalist leaders, it has hardly received the attention of researchers on the history of education at the university. How was university adult education Africanised at Makerere? This article answers this question using archival sources and interview data from former members of Makerere University staff. The article argues that the Africanisation of adult education occurred through the recruitment of Africans and the modification of the curriculum and entry requirements to incorporate African perspectives and relevance to the needs at the time. Financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation was influential in attracting Ugandan academic staff for employment. By 1969, 79 per cent of the staff in adult education were African. An admission criterion, the mature-age admission scheme, was introduced to support Africanisation of the country through retraining of adults for employment, while learning content and language were adjusted to reflect a concern with African topics and perspectives. Therefore, these were the strategies through which the Africanisation of adult education occurred at Makerere.