Dr David Ssekamatte

Climate change and sustainability remain huge issues among scholars, practitioners and decision-makers across the globe and in Africa. The call for action to develop interventions for mitigation and adaptation by formal, informal and non-formal education is urgent; the need is to explore how higher education in Africa can play a significant role in mainstreaming these concepts in learning even more so.

Dr David Ssekamatte believes that the importance of education, training, public awareness, public participation and public access to information about this and cooperation at all levels on climate change cannot be stressed enough. He hopes to establish a Centre of Excellence in Climate Change and Sustainability Management at the School of Business and Management at the Uganda Management Institute, where he is a lecturer.

His Future Africa Research Leader Fellowship (FAR-LeaF) research project is titled ‘Cultivating climate change and sustainability education in business and management training at higher education institutions in the African context: Multiple cases of Uganda Management Institute and Nkumba University in Uganda’.

For Dr Ssekamatte, climate change and sustainability education needs to be mainstreamed. Teaching this to students of business and management education can contribute greatly to a more sustainable world, he believes. The concepts have been influential in economics, policy, philosophy, leadership and marketing, but can be better exploited and established further in business and management education. Business schools and management training institutions have the highest impact on increasing environmental awareness and sustainability, and have the capacity to incentivise change in values and enable pro-sustainable behaviours.

Dr Ssekamatte’s study asks how business and management training at higher education institutions can be organised and restructured to integrate climate change and sustainability knowledge, skills and attitudes in the curricula and institutional practices.

The case institutions have been selected because they offer business and management training; the Uganda Management Institute is government-owned, while the Nkumba University is privately owned. Data will be collected from administrators, lecturers and students via survey questionnaires, semi-structured, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions.

The study is expected to add to the scanty theoretical and empirical scientific literature on climate change and sustainability education in the African context. It will yield policy briefs to engage policymakers and actors in business and management education institutions to effectively integrate the relevant education in their study and research programmes. It will also lead to a review of institutional culture towards climate and sustainability-friendly practices within the case institutions and other similar places of higher learning in Uganda.