• He thanked Makerere University for honouring him by building an institution named after him.
Image: DPPS
Deputy President William Ruto has urged Africa to rise up and find solutions to global problems rather than relying on the West.
"It is time to shift from the tradition of Africa, Africans and African dilemmas and prescribed antidotes being objects of study by Western scholars. The interaction of Africans with their challenges is an industrial-scale Eurocentric scholastic and lay analysis," Ruto said.
The DP spoke at the university on Saturday during a ceremony to lay the foundation stone for the building of the William Ruto Institute of African Studies.
He thanked Makerere University for honouring him by building an institution named after him.
"I am immensely humbled by the honour you have done me in choosing to associate me with this magnificent addition to the storied achievements of Makerere University," he said.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has pledged $100,000 (Sh10 million) towards the construction of the building whose purpose includes developing innovative approaches to teaching and learning about Africa.
Ruto echoed Museveni's description of Makerere as 'the original mustard seed of teaching, learning and research in our part of the world'.
"To be here, therefore, is to not only visit the cradle of higher education in the region and spring of modern knowledge, it is also the culmination of a pilgrimage to an important shrine of patriotic, Pan-African and progressive institution," the DP said.
Ruto decried the disparity in advancements in science, technology and innovation across the globe as compared to that in Africa.
He said Africa bears a disproportionate share of the modern world’s challenges of poverty, disease, vulnerability to climate change and natural disasters.
Ruto said Africa has to find solutions to its own problems rather than borrowing them from across the globe.
"Our most important institutions are either borrowed by us, or inherited from those who borrowed from others," he said.
"Similarly, the knowledge base that shapes our institutions and drives our discourse to a great extent is influenced by those who have contributed in our formative history as nations."
Ruto said Africa often regurgitates paradigms it has not interrogated.
"It is axiomatic that until the lion learns how to write, every story will glorify the hunter," he said.
The DP continued, "There is nothing exceptional about Africa that explains it’s exclusion from the broad wave of global progress or dooms it to perpetual failure and dysfunction."
Ruto said there is nothing inherently African about poverty, insecurity, disease and unemployment.
He said Africa’s marginalisation from global transformation has a lot to do with knowledge and institutions that have been embedded in paradigms that underpin political, economic and cultural hegemonies.
"It is time to reclaim African institutional legitimacy through epistemic agency in order to recalibrate the entire paradigm, narrative and institutions for socioeconomic transformation," Ruto said.
"An Afro-centric knowledge-base enriched by interdisciplinary complementarity will lead us on a sustainable path of appropriate, relevant and home-grown institutions."
Ruto referred to the change of Kenya's education system to the competency based curriculum.
"We have changed the examination in our technical and vocational education to be about the acquisition of skills and competencies as opposed to the emphasis of the language of instruction," he said.
"In the past, many students though excellent in their particular skill failed their examinations because of their proficiency challenges with English. As a result of these and other interventions, the enrollment has grown from 120,000 four years ago to 380,000 currently and is projected to hit five million mark in five years."