About 20 nominated research fellows for the EfD-Mak centre convened the first meeting on 14th August, 2019 where Dr. Edward Bbaale and Prof. Johhny Mugisha were endorsed official Director and Deputy Director respectively. The meeting was held at the conference room of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES).
The objective of the meeting was to officially present and introduce the Centre to the Researchers and to discuss the road map to success through their input mainly through the production of quality research outputs.
The meeting was also intended to introduce the core administrative team of the centre the research fellows and to have a general consensus to the appointment of the Centre’s Director and the Deputy Director. This was one of the preliminary activities leading to the official launch of EfD-Mak Centre.
Then interim Director, EfD-Mak Centre Dr. Edward Bbaale welcomed the members and thanked them for sacrificing their time to attend the meeting.
He also thanked all those who took the action in responding to the EfD initiative’s annual call for the expression of interest for the research projects as of 2019 call.
Dr. Bbaale urged the researchers to carry forward the same spirit and competition to realize the desired goals of the EfD-MAK Centre.
He reported that the Centre had been granted operations from the secretariat and already secured an office space at the Central Teaching Facility (CTF) block, Office Room number 5.1. with preliminary activities already taking shape.
“In collaboration with the University’s Human Resource Directorate, the process of recruiting the key human resource personnel (Data Manager, Project Administrator and Communications Officer) was successfully conducted.
It is through this meeting that you researchers are to provide an official consent to appointment and regularization of the Director and the Deputy Director of the Centre.
You are also to identify and express your preferred research areas by filling the designed forms distributed before you to specifically capture this information,” Dr. Bbaale said.
In his presentation, the Director provided the background information to the EfD initiative coordinated by the EfD secretariat at the school of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden including the EfD-Mak Centre’s Vision, Mission, programs and expected activities.
Dr. Bbaale also highlighted the qualification requirements for a Senior Research Fellow, Research Fellow and Junior Research fellows.
Members commended the initial team for the great work while applying for the award of the EfD centre at Makerere University expressing happiness to be part of the centre and readiness to work as a team to take the Centre forward and compete favorably with those that have been in existence for some time.
Members congratulated and welcomed the appointed core team (Project Administrator, Communications Officer and the Data Manager) and unanimously agreed to consider Assoc. Prof. Edward Bbaale, who was the interim Director of the Centre to be fully constituted as the Centre’s Director and that Assoc. Prof. Jonny Mugisha be the fully established Deputy Director of EfD-MAK Centre.