The new Africa initiative working for synergy : Proceedings of the 1997, Addis

The New Africa Initiative (NAI) was initiated in July 1996 in Uganda withthe support of the Nairobi-based Ford Foundation's Governance and Civil Society Program for Eastern Africa. The idea was to advance mutually beneficial interaction among key governmental, civil society and knowledge-generating institutions and individuals. The ideas carried over by each institution and the objectives set by the same are indeed very broad. Six institutions launched various programmes in Entebbe, Uganda, at a workshop held in 1996 to achieve the above objectives. The six institutions were Kituo Cha Katiba : the East African Centre for Constitutional Development (EACODEV);the Series on Alternative Research in East Africa Trust (SAREAT);Development Through Media (DTM);East African Uongozi Institute (EAFUI);the National Museums of Kenya (NMK);and the Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa (OSSREA). The Entebbe workshop was preceded by a planning workshop on "Summer School for Promising Undergraduate Students in East Africa" convened and hosted by OSSREA in March 1996 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Those who were invited to the planning meeting were senior university administrators, deans of social science and heads of political science departments in Addis Ababa University, Dar es Salaam University, Makerere University and Nairobi University. The planning workshop on the Summer School underlined the need to find alternatives to an African leadership that is self-centered and self-servicing, and that contributes little to develop...