Centre For Basic Research-Uganda

Mission, Vision and Objectives

Mission

To generate and disseminate knowledge by conducting basic and applied research of social, economic and political significance to Uganda in particular and Africa in general, so as to influence policy, raise consciousness and improve quality of life.

Vision

To become a centre of greater excellence spearheading generation and dissemination of appropriate basic and policy information and knowledge in collaboration with partners and clients for sustainable development.

Objectives

Research on issues of basic social significance
Document materials on these issues
Publish research results
Organize training for interested groups, and
Liaise with institutions with which CBR broadly shares similar objectives.

Administration

The policy-making organ of CBR is the General Meeting, which comprises the researchers. The General Meeting determines all the activities of CBR including appointment of the Trustees of the Centre.
The head of the Centre is the Executive Director who is in charge of implementing all policy decisions taken by the General Meeting. The day-to-day running of the Centre is the responsibility of the staff in Administration. A Librarian, assisted by Assistant Librarians, and Documentation Assistants, heads the Research Library.

Funding

Seed money for setting up CBR came from the Council for the Development of Social Research (CODESRIA) which helped set up the library, and a generous Ugandan private entrepreneur who paid the first year's rent for our premises. In the later years, CBR's own core research programme was sustained largely through generous grants from the Swedish Research Co-operation Agency (SAREC/SIDA). Other major funders have included IDRC and Ford Foundation. CBR also generates research funds through research proposals submitted to a wide range of funding agencies, local, regional and international. Other than the above, CBR's funds have been generated from local fundraising initiatives and research grants.

Fundraising Initiatives

Local Over the years, CBR has increased the local share of funding through two types of efforts. The first has involved the sale of our services in different forms: publications, documentation material, and consultancies. The second has been through raising funds amongst those in the local community who believe the work of CBR is a worthy contribution to developing Ugandan society. Much of these funds are used to meet the ever-increasing institutional over-head costs incurred as CBR broadens its services to the wider public.

Research

Research at CBR covers a broad range of fields and interests. These include History, Political Economy, Sociology, Political Science, Law, Education and the Sciences. From 1988 to-date, CBR research agenda has included the following studies: labour (peasant, plantation, factory and artisanal); social movements and democratic struggles; appropriate technology in peasant farming; pastoralism in Karamoja; Land tenure and land use in 16 districts; Rights and constitutionalism; the informal sector; gender; environmental accountability in decentralized contexts; civil society and governance; non-profit organisations, impact of structural adjustment programmes and some aspects of cultural studies.

Documentation

The library operates a documentation service that provides a newspaper clipping service and a collection of conference/seminar papers and other unpublished materials that fall within the CBR research agenda. The newspaper cuttings service covers 67 different thematic areas including, AIDS, land tenure issues, constitutionalism, democracy and governance, gender issues, armed conflict, to mention a few. The documentation of materials, which started in mid-April 1989, and continues to the present, includes news items, commentaries and opinion-letters culled from Ugandan newspaper publications.

Ugandan Popular Music Archive

Under the ENRECA Urban Cultures Project, CBR has collected and organized a Popular Music archive data base- the only one of its kind in Uganda. The objective of this archive is to construct a repository that not only preserves representative samples of Ugandan popular music, but also actively facilitates research into the growth of popular cultural forms in Uganda. The archive currently holds more than 5000 songs.

Training

CBR trains its own researchers in quantitative and qualitative research and computer skills through a number of short courses and training workshops. Of recent, CBR’s training capabilities have been extended outside of CBR to all interested and highly motivated graduates, through intensive weekly and monthly training programmes in research methods and writing skills.

International Conferences and Workshops

CBR has previously organized and held a number of international, regional and national workshops, the most outstanding of which are:

The First Pan-African Symposium on Academic Freedom, Kampala, 1990•
Pastoralism, Crisis and Transformation in Karamoja, Kampala, August 1992
International Workshop on “Women and Work: Historical Trends”, Kampala, September 1992
Workers’ Education, Kampala, March 1993
Building Healthy Cities: Improving the Health of Urban Migrants and the Urban Poor, Kampala, July 2001,
The annual series of International Cultural Studies Workshops in Uganda that have been held regularly since August 2002.

Networking and Collaboration

CBR collaborates and networks with a number of organisations with which it shares similar objectives. The list of the organisations has been growing over the years. On the international scene, collaborating institutions have included, among others, University of Nairobi; University of Dar-es-Salaam; Johns Hopkins University; IDS, University of Sussex; Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), South Africa; UNDP; CODESRIA; UNRISD, Geneva; IDS, University of Roskilde, Denmark; Centre for the Studies of Social Science (CSSS), and the University of Jadvapur, Calcutta, India; World Resources Institute (WRI), Washington; Series on Alternative Research in East Africa Trust (SAREAT); African Studies Centre, University of Leiden, The Netherlands; Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD)

At the national level, CBR has collaborated with various Faculties of Makerere University and other Uiniversities; Government Ministries and Departments; and research institutions and researchers in the country.

Networks Hosted

CBR has hosted a number of research collaboration networks, which have helped CBR researchers to develop new ideas and broaden their perspectives. These have included:

Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) and Worker's Health
CBR has hosted a continental network on "Structural Adjustment Programmes and Workers' Health", from 1999 to 2002, financed by IDRC, and included participating research teams from Uganda, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Nigeria. This network brought together researchers working on issues of workers' health in the post-SAP period.

Network for Ugandan Researchers and Research Users (NURRU)
In October 1994 a Network of Ugandan Researchers and Research Users (NURRU) was formed during a workshop which brought together 24 Ugandan institutions involved in research-related activities. CBR was host to its Secretariat until 1999 when NURRU acquired its own premises. The Government of The Netherlands funded the initial NURRU research programme.

Arid Lands and Resource Management (ALARM)
This is a network for Research in Eastern Africa. ALARM brought together researchers from Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda working on pastoral resources and environmental management issues in these countries. The research results have been published at CBR as ALARM Working papers.

Gender and Work in Eastern and Southern Africa (GWESA)
GWESA network was hosted at CBR from 1997 to 2002. GWESA has promoted research on gender and work in countries of Tanzania, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Uganda. The research results have been published at CBR as GWESA working papers.

Publications

4 Monographs/books
112 Working papers
19 Workshop Reports
6 Commissioned Reports
17 Occasional Papers
1 Bibliography