We have only 20 real universities in Uganda - Prof. Nawangwe

With a population of almost 50 million people, Nawangwe says the country is severely underserved in regards to tertiary education.

According to the Ministry of Education, Uganda has about 60 universities.

Of these, 40 are privately owned, 12 are public universities, 5 are military universities and three are regarded as degree-awarding institutions.

Yet according to Prof Nawangwe, more than half of these “do not qualify to be called universities.”

"Many of the universities, -- in fact more than half of them -- have a population of 1000 students or less, so they do not qualify to be called universities,” Nawangwe said on Tuesday.

“So you can say there are about 20 real universities in Uganda which have a combined population of about 100000."

Nawangwe was making a case for more universities to be established in Uganda to cater for the rapidly growing population.

In Uganda, he said, every university caters for over 2 million people, yet in a country like the United Kingdom with a slightly higher population, they have over 300 universities, which means that each university caters for about 232,000 people.

Nawangwe called upon the government to prioritize tertiary education in order to make its population more competitive in the world.

He noted for instance, that 80% of the adult people in Sweden have a university education whereas in Uganda it is only 6%, which is one of the lowest in Africa.