The Business Professional Associations in MUBS

The MUBS degree programe portfolio includes programmes like Accounting, Finance, Marketing, Transport among others. Most of these programmes or courses have students’ Associations. The students are very proud of these associations and now and again they organize meetings to celebrate some achievement or the other in the profession. On Wednesday February 15, 2017 the MUBS Guild Education Minister Hon. Albert Alinda organized a workshop to discuss the different professions in MUBS. The workshop was addressed by various Heads of Department and Deans of Faculty. These included Dean Freddie Ssemukono and Dean Annet Nabatanzi among others. 

I was invited to address the students and was pleased to share how MUBS staff started acquiring professional qualifications, I recall that way back in the early 1990s I was invited to speak at a seminar organized by professional accountants in Entebbe. This seminar was intended to determine the syllabus for the then upcoming local accountancy profession. I had earlier been involved in making proposals for the establishment of the accounting profession. I was requested by the then Hon. Minister of Finance, the late Kafumbe Mukasa to do so. I travelled to Scotland and met the ACCA, I went to Kenya and met the Certified Public Accountants organisations and I was in Tanzania visiting both Arusha and Dar-salaam to benchmark. I wrote recommendations modelling the Uganda’s Accountant Association on the Kenyan model. I submitted my recommendations to the minister however the minister then made some changes in the recommendations that were not acceptable to the then professionals. Subsequently changes were made and the Association has been up and running.

However what struck me in the meeting where I had been invited was that since I did not have an ACCA, I was locked out of the discussions for the curriculum despite my being a teacher! They had good sense, why should I discuss a syllabus of a profession when I was not a professional myself? I agreed with them and I left the meeting but that gave me a calling. On return to the then Faculty of commerce in Makerere I urged my colleagues to pursue professional courses in their respective areas and as it is always said, the rest is history. Today MUBS has a policy of paying examination fees for those academic staff that successfully pass professional qualifications. This may be ACCA, CPA ICSA, CIPS, CIMA, DMI or any other similar professional qualification in the area of business. Many members of staff have these qualifications now. The spirit of this policy was threefold;

1. To empower our staff to make sure they attain both academic and professional qualifications

2. To support the profession by having academicians who could teach, research, and at the same time profess in the subject matter

3. Improve the teaching in the different professionals

The professions are now being subscribed to early by young students in MUBS. The Students’ Associations highlight the need for the associations and their importance in the economy. There have been attempts by some people at Makerere University to close our degree programmes talking about how these degrees are duplicated! They have argued that there are many similarities in the programmes. We have informed those who have cared to listen that business courses have some essential courses that must necessarily look alike. These courses are found in each and every programme. Unfortunately those who have wanted to kill MUBS never want to listen. The business profession has to be grown and has different various sub- professions in it. You cannot know this unless you are in it! I congratulate the students for their foresight in developing and loving their professions. At one stage Uganda had only 200 qualified Accountants while Kenya had over 2000. The interest in Profession in Uganda has led to tremendous growth in numbers. I need to count how many.