Afronline – The Voice Of Africa

At the beginning of this year, Denis Tumwesigye Kyetere moved from Uganda to Kenya to take over as executive director of the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF). Kyetere began his career in 1979 as a scientific officer and maize agronomist at Uganda’s Kawanda Research Station, and has since held a number of important posts in the country, being appointed director-general of the National Agricultural Research Organisation in 2006.

His contributions to Uganda’s agricultural sector have been significant. They include leading a team that developed a new maize variety, which accounted for 60 per cent of the country’s maize production during 1999.

So Kyetere’s move to Kenya and the AATF is the latest loss to Uganda of the scientific brains that are needed to help the country solve of its socio-economic challenges.

The exodus of scientists from Uganda to other African countries in search of better working conditions is generating growing concern within the country’s academic community. And the country’s president, Yoweri Museveni, has indicated that he shares their worries.

But the movement of scientists out of the country is not yet causing concern in all areas of government, and there is little indication of any attempt to change the situation.

“They have lost many teaching staff, most of whom crossed over to Rwanda,” he says, although pointing out that research is needed to confirm whether Uganda’s situation is more serious than elsewhere in Africa.

Scientists in Uganda blame the exodus of their colleagues on the lack of a good working environment, poor research infrastructure, the unavailability of long-term benefits, and the lack of opportunities for promotion.

They accuse the government of being insensitive to their needs, and in particular of failing to provide decent salaries.

“I am educated, but if I cannot educate my children, do you think I would be happy working in Uganda?” asks Fina Opio, an agricultural scientist working with the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA) in Kampala. “Poor pay is the leading [reason] why scientists leave the country.”

But after training, he points out, they do not always return to live and work in Uganda, as the laboratories in which they have trained have recognised their talent and encouraged them to stay and be paid a higher salary then they would receive if they went home.

“To be a lecturer at a university [in Uganda] you need to have a PhD, but you are then only rewarded with peanuts,” says Eriabu Lugujjo, head of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Makerere University, where the pay for scientists can be as low as US$600 a month.

Abel Atukwase, an assistant lecturer in the Department of Food Technology at Makerere University, says that his wages are even less than this. “It is not even equivalent to the housing allowance of a Kenyan professor. We have the lowest pay in the region.”

Even professors can earn as little as US$1,000 a month, far lower even than their counterparts in other African countries.

“The financial rewards here are more than 20 times those I could earn in Uganda,” says Abel Lufafa, an agricultural policy researcher who has worked in Rwanda for six years.

Now Ugandan scientists tend to move to South Africa, Rwanda and Southern Sudan. Atukwase said that many of his students and friends have picked Rwanda due to close historical links between the two countries.

Brekmans Bahizi, vice rector in charge of finance and administration at the Rwanda’s Institute of Legal Practice and Development, said that expatriate professors — many of whom are Ugandans — can earn US$2500 per month in Rwandan universities.

Records from the faculty of engineering at Makerere University show that the faculty lost 17 lecturers in 2010.

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