By John Semakula

Uganda Christian University (UCU) will in May 2021 rollout a new post-graduate diploma in Sustainable Business and Renewable Energy.

According to the UCU Faculty of Business and Administration, the course sponsored by DALILA was cleared by the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) in August.

DALILA is a capacity-building project funded by the Education, Audio-visual and Culture Executive Agency of the European Union.

DALILA stands for Development, Academic Curricula on Sustainable Africa-Project.

The Associate Dean of the UCU Faculty of Business and Administration, Godfrey Sempungu, revealed that six new courses on “Renewable Technologies and Green Business Creation and Development” have been designed for the new program in line with the sponsorship agreement.

The courses are: Energy and Sustainable Development; Renewable Energy Technologies and Decentralization of Electricity; Energy Efficiency and Storage Application; Business and Financial Models of Renewable Energy; Renewable Energy Financing and Modeling; and Renewable Energy Enterprise Management Support to Business and Enterprise.

Sempungu said the program will offer renewable energy startup and entrepreneurship opportunities to UCU graduate students, alumni, staff, community and other key stakeholders such as those in the Church of Uganda Dioceses of Mukono and Kampala.

The program is a product of a sh5bn (Euro 1,123,790 or $1.3 million American) grant, which the Faculty won recently as part of an international nine-partner consortium.

A similar project is also implemented in four other universities in Uganda and Tanzania. The other three are Uganda Martyrs University, the State University of Zanzibar and University of Dodoma.

Sempungu said the post-graduate diploma will be taught for two semesters and that students will be expected to take classes both online and face-to-face on campus.

He said: “The courses are intended to facilitate students’ transition to work and to promote the use of innovative business technologies.  Green university laboratories will provide vocational training for renewable energy and adaptation of technologies to local context plus boosting students employability.”

According to the Faculty, the program will be facilitated by lecturers from UCU and other partner institutions in Spain and Italy and that the best four students will have a chance to travel and conduct their internship in European companies for a month.

The other partner higher education institutions are the University of Cadiz in Spain and Sapienza University of Rome – both providing expertise to inform the project.

According to the terms of the grant, UCU also shall furnish a renewable energy laboratory for training of students in the recent trends in the field and to allow them many hours of practice under the guidance of experts.

To avail stakeholders with the necessary information about the project, the UCU Faculty of Business and Administration, in conjunction with its implementing partner the Faculty of Engineering, held an online DALILA Information Day on December 10.

Speaking during the event, the Faculty’s Dean Dr. Martin Lwanga said the project is helping to fulfill UCU’s mission of sending out job creators – not seekers – to the market.

“This is an exciting time,” he said. “Over 100 proposals were submitted from all over the world and UCU emerged among the winners.”

In his remarks, the deputy Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Dr. John Kitayimbwa, said the program was well thought out because it supports Uganda’s development goals under Vision 2040. The National Vision is intended to transform Uganda from a peasant to a modern and prosperous country within 30 years through strengthening fundamental infrastructure, including energy.

Kitayimbwa noted that the four main components of the program – partnership, practical based education, emphasis on environmental sustainability, and renewable energy – make the program unique and outstanding. “We therefore need to raise more awareness about the program because we need more people on board when we finally roll it out,” he said.

Dr. Miria Anguyo from the UCU Faculty of Engineering said the post-graduate diploma will be able to produce graduates who will provide solutions in renewable energy.

Meanwhile, Prof. Cipri Katiuscia, the project’s international coordinator from Italy, said she was glad to be part of the project that seeks to create employment opportunities for Africa’s young people and particularly in the green economy sector.

“We need to give support to the young people in Africa who support their countries’ young economies,” she said.

Marianna Stori, a member from one of the partner organizations of DALILA, took the members through the dangers of climate change in Africa and globally including flooding, landslides, heat waves, loss of biodiversity and desertification and urged participants to embrace the new measures to contain climate change.

This is one of the grants the UCU Faculty of Business and Administration has won lately in a bid to boost its academic training for students. The Faculty also recently won a sh230m (51,700.4 Eur or $62,611 American) grant to develop a short course in promoting bird tourism. The course will be incorporated in Bachelor of Hospitality and Tourism.

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