ARU welcomed its first 30 women students in September 2006 to URDT's integrated development campus in Kagadi, Uganda – a rural area in the Kibaale district, a five-hour drive west from Kampala. By 2008, ARU plans to grow its class size to 90+ students, accommodating graduates from the URDT Girls' School, the URDT Institute for Vocational, Business and Media Studies, and other qualified candidates.
The ARU Difference
The URDT/ARU campus is the perfect location for an institution that is dedicated to educating and training Community Transformation Specialists. Young women learn by doing, taking advantage of the rich resources of URDT's existing programmes, both on campus and in the ten counties that are served by URDT's staff and students. Working side by side with URDT's experienced professionals and with families, entrepreneurs, bankers, farmers, health workers and community leaders, ARU students learn:
- The daily activities, concerns and goals of local villagers, mechanics, furniture builders, welders, construction workers, food processors, tailors, journalists, healthcare workers, social workers and land rights specialists
- The power of systems thinking, participatory development, the creative, visionary process, effective partnerships and conversations, and conscious attention to one's own character and leadership development
- The latest proven techniques in agriculture, water sanitation, health and appropriate technologies – solar energy, generate biogas, etc.
- How to support entrepreneurialism
- How to leverage communications technologies (radio and Internet)
- How to advance human and land rights, peace and a civil society
Why Is ARU Needed Now?
In 1998, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said:
Today, globalization is affecting all aspects of our lives, from the political, to the social, to the cultural. Only knowledge, it would seem, is not being globalized. In an age where the acquisition and advancement of knowledge is a more powerful weapon in a nation's arsenal than any missile or mine, the knowledge gap between the rural and urban is widening. This trend must be reversed…
Africa is struggling; and it is predominantly rural. Its failure to "catch up" with industrialized countries is, in part, caused by the imposition of western approaches to both development and education on African rural economies.
Here's a typical example of this problem in development: a large international organization sends machinery and sophisticated technical advisers into rural areas to effect agricultural reform. For a while, dramatic increases in food production and other improvements are achieved. But rural people are either not involved or are ill-prepared to grasp the methods used. So when the advisers leave and the machinery breaks down, the people are worse off than they were before. Without the skills to use the imported technology, but nevertheless dependent on it, they feel more helpless than they did before the "development aid" arrived.
And in education: educational systems are molded on the European industrialized style, training participants for administrative and other "white collar" jobs. But few such jobs exist in most African countries. The result is a mass of educated young people who cannot find jobs in the cities and who are unwilling to go back to the rural areas from which they came.
ARU's education is designed to fix this glaring mismatch. Its African educators and leaders engage with the rural people where they live, recognizing and building on local wisdom, and developing ways to partner with the West and North that empowers, rather than erodes, Africa's international voice.
Africa does not have to be brain-drained and a perpetual global beggar. After 20 years of working in rural Uganda, we at URDT know that rural people can and will rise to the challenges facing them if their partners in development care to understand and help them achieve their aspirations. The ARU degree programme will enable its graduates to be truly successful partners in development to rural African communities.
News from the African Rural University
You can always find the latest information about the African Rural University for Women and our other programmes, as well as updates from the Uganda Rural Development and Training Programme on our News Blog.
African Rural University for Women
The African Rural University for Women is the first university in Uganda to offer specialized training in integrated rural development.
Characteristics of the ARU Graduate
The community transformation specialists who graduate from ARU after three years of study and completion of their dissertations will be visionary leaders, entrepreneurs, rural development experts and gender and technology professionals.
Visionary Leaders - A visionary leader is a person who inspires and is a change agent, not because of a powerful position in society, or age, or wealth, but because of her high ideals, strength of vision, humanity and capacity to create results. She approaches development, not from a basis of needs, but from a rights-based perspective, which broadly includes all our rights, including our civil, political, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights. She deals calmly with conflict and creates a peaceful context for considering different points of view, using them to enrich the development process. She works as an equal within the community, using the generative power of kindness to engender enthusiasm and confidence, shared vision and collaborative action. She holds fast to the joy of life, to love and beauty as supreme values that bring meaning, sense and right action to the community. She combines thinking "outside the box" with just and courageous action. She maintains a pragmatic link to, and works with, the current social structures. She is a mentor, enabling others to also become visionary leaders.
Entrepreneurs – An entrepreneur is a person who is self-motivated and innovative. She creates situations that advance personal or collective visions. She is able to mobilize appropriate resources to deliver value to customers and stakeholders. She introduces, facilitates and enhances the workings of financial intermediation.
Rural Development Experts – A rural development expert is knowledgeable about the many models, worldwide, of rural development. She understands the aspirations, philosophies and ways of the local people she is working with. She appreciates and accesses the locally available natural and human resources. She develops innovative models for change that are appropriate to, and effective in, the local situation. She remains open to surprise and to working with new opportunities as people make progress and naturally change their focus, interests and concerns. She facilitates integrated, holistic development to create human and social capital.
Gender and Technology Professionals – A gender and technology professional is a person who demystifies technology and who enables both women and men to design, produce, use, own and maintain appropriate technologies that serve their aims.
Why Focus on Women?
African children's health and education are in women's hands. Women's leadership at the community level is indispensable for rural transformation. Yet, the majority of girls drop out of primary school after the age of 12. Furthermore, schools' curricula don't prepare girls and women to meet the exigencies of rural life, including family income-generating activities.
Uganda does have women represented in many professional areas, such as women doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers and politicians as role models. (Several of these role models sit on the ARU Council.) Still, their numbers are dismal. The proper mix of women's leaders – professional, political, business and housewife – would create the proper synergy for transforming Ugandan and African societies.
Goals of the African Rural University
The goals are ARU are:
- To graduate women community transformation specialists who embody the characteristics described above.
- To enrich rural communities through the infusion of educated women with the above capacities, thus raising the status of rural communities in all terms: economic, social, cultural and political. To make rural communities attractive enough for people to happily live and work there.
- To revitalize African philosophy and ways of learning and living, using the powers of community, participatory research and sharing in the design, production and ownership of innovations.
- To protect and strengthen the family in which mother and father have equal dignity but separate identity. They exemplify partnership and provide security, love and freedom that children need to grow.
- To create ARU as a center of excellence and a community in which learning occurs by creating the life we truly want for ourselves, family, community, nation, continent and world.
- To advance community transformation worldwide by:
- Recognizing and advancing women's inherent capacities and roles as visionary leaders in the household, village, nation and world
- Being a centre of excellence in community transformation as a role model for others
- Causing changes in thinking, acting, designing and offering education, hence making systemic changes in education
- Including international students and teachers in the life of ARU
- Hosting international conferences
- Contributing a robust and vibrant African culture and voice to the global human quest for happiness
- Sharing learning and progress through published writings, drama, film, storytelling, technology, industry and business