Revisiting the Struggles for Academic/Intellectual Freedom and the Social Responsibility of Intellectuals in Africa: The Case of the Dar es Salaam and Kampala Declarations
by J. Oloka-Onyango, Professor of Law School of Law, Makerere University, Uganda
Revised text of Keynote Reflections at the Colloquia on Academic Freedom and Social Responsibility, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 7th to 9th November 2023 and Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique, 15th to 17th April 2024
Academic freedom is about the building of a new civilization. It is the site of struggle for a truly pluralist democracy; a bastion against authoritarianism and a challenge to fundamentalism. Thandika Mkandawire
Introduction
The Dar es Salaam Declaration on Academic Freedom and Social Responsibility of Academics (hereafter the ‘DD’), and the Kampala Declaration on Intellectual Freedom and Social Responsibility (hereafter the ‘KD’) have their geographical origins in Tanzania and Uganda, respectively. The former was adopted in April 1990, and the latter came into existence in November of that year. Both were primarily authored by the same individual, Issa Shivji, law professor at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM).
While the author might have been the same, the institutional parents of the declarations were different: on the one hand, the University of Dar es Salaam Academic Staff Assembly (UDASA), and on the other, the Council for the Development of Economic and Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA). The DD had six signatories, all of them being staff associations of the different institutions that came together to adopt the instrument. These were the Ardhi Institute, the Co-operative College, the Institute of Development Management, the Institute of Finance Management, Sokoine University and UDSM, a mix of traditional universities and other tertiary institutions, all of them public or created by the state. Those who attended the Kampala Symposium and adopted the KD were academics, students, administrators, trade unionists, donors and members of civil society, drawn from all over the African continent and the diaspora, and including several non-Africans. Read more ..
