The African Rural University (ARU)

I am Mwalimu Musheshe. I am a social entrepreneur who sees the power in every individual to envision and create a brighter future. Towards this goal I am the Co-Founder and Chairman of the African Rural University (ARU) and the Uganda Rural Development and Training Program (URDT). We have engaged over 30,000 rural and poor villagers in Western Uganda to stimulate new, locally-led approaches and projects for social, ecological and economic development. We are succeeding through hard and exciting work.

I was raised with six siblings in polygamous family in a rustic village in Kasese District of Western Uganda, started school late in life because of droughts and social unrest, have spent some months in prison for activism against authoritarian regimes, and hold degrees from universities in Uganda (Bachelors in Agricultural Engineering), the United Kingdom (Masters in Development Management), and the United States (PhD in Environmental Citizenship and Leadership). 

ARU is creating a force for social development and environmental sustainability among disenfranchised and poor populations. We are reversing the conventional development aid business, positioning marginalized people as skilled protagonists and creative leaders (rather than reactive dependents) in their own development.

In doing this ARU has become an accredited school system, pioneering some unconventional techniques but with authority to grant formal university degrees.  These three-year degrees award rural women students who learn specifically to envision and create future situations they and their own communities define. This is our constituency because they are the most effective change agents in society.

ARU learning includes traditional arts and sciences, but always applied by the students/co-creators in formal home community projects and regional internships, and always activated through focus on local resources the people can readily bring to bear.

 It is the woman student’s own vision embraced, articulated, and activated for all of society.

The problem and its scale are large. Many global and national development aid businesses and government processes are built around it. The problem is that technical solutions and dependency-based efforts are being outpaced by the social, economic and environmental problems they’re supposedly trying to address, to the ultimate detriment of everyone.

In that predominant aid model, the people most capable of innovating and actually finding solutions become passive and dependent (or radical and violent), waiting on problems and relief funding to react to. In Uganda alone, 68% of peasants and marginalized poor are in this situation.

ARU addresses determinant factors in this dilemma: marginalized people participating in and leading their own development; social and business innovators recognizing unique local assets they can deploy for systemic solutions; unique attributes and skills of women as more holistic thinkers/doers being embraced for society’s systemic growth; and the sense of agency and leadership in business and government that results by integrating these factors into formal development processes.

In simple terms, ARU is a school system combining classroom and applied learning in development economics, in a way which is both formally accredited and transformative in local communities. ARU’s three-year university curriculum includes classical arts and sciences, applied projects co-created between students and communities, and year-long student internships with community and government institutions.

ARU’s foundation at all times, however, is the process of students and their communities co-learning how to envision future scenarios based on their own real-life aspirations, and to create approaches for taking themselves there. This underlies all school activities. This approach is based on the overlap of our own learning and of research about structural dynamics and creative tension recognized by thought leaders such as Peter Senge, Robert Fritz and others.

ARU’s curriculum, therefore, includes core academic studies you would find at any university; a constant orientation around participatory “visioning and creating” rather than “problem solving” by the students/co-creators; the empirical recognition of economic goods created by collaborative and generative relationships (in contrast to the economics of exclusion and dominance), and regenerative nourishment between people and ecosystems (local resources); and the role of village intelligence and traditional wisdom with community elders teaching alongside classically trained academicians.

We serve (1) rural marginalized communities outside of “mainstream” economic systems. These people are often the target but seldom the participants in development aid. And we serve (2) the wider social and economic fabric of our nation that depends on actual development and collective welfare of the nation’s people. And we serve (3) women, who are typically disenfranchised and undervalued as holistic change agents society. We find that, with room to act and recognized skills, women are most effective drivers of transformative social and economic change and ecological resilience. 

We are these people. Most of our leadership team are of these villages. Some professors are elders and traditional wisdom, operating alongside more traditional academics in arts and sciences. 100% of ARU students are women.

Most importantly, we practice participatory development as a core value in every aspect of operations. In fact, a primary role of the first 29 students of ARU for three years was to help create our institution itself! They are now in village, economic, government, and household leadership positions.

Every ARU student learns to envision, create, and keep building on their own insights. Our curriculum insists on this both in the classrooms and communities. 

In addition to systemically positioning numbers of disenfranchised and poor people at the helm of their own development (Elevate Prize dimension #1), our actual learning and subsequent teaching and wider partnerships shine light on (i.e. Elevate Prize dimension #2) the underappreciated economic power of two forces: (a) caring and collaboration rather than competitive individualism and dominance as drivers of innovation and value creation; and (b) action specifically at the nutrient-nutrition-regenerative overlap of health, food, farming and environmental sectors as driver of systemic economic, biological, and cultural value creation and further innovation. (I.e. systemic/holistic/regenerative rather than reductionist economics.)

It is the progression of good people and good ideas continually taking action together over time. Building from commitment to truth and community action, as a child and then as a university student (and with some challenges noted below), in 1987 I gathered a group of volunteers from a former NGO food and peace project to create a new organization, the URDT. We aimed to serve people who were the victims of difficult circumstances. Our philosophy was that people with a vision and commitment to real change can create a truly effective values-based organization. This succeeded in several directions, including creation of the URDT school and its unique vision-and-create approaches, recognition the unique aptitudes of women in society, and the paramount importance of practical student and community learning hand-in-hand. As the girl students began to grow into adults, we saw new barriers constraining their paths in life, including exclusion from university systems, as well as even greater need for their unique skills. This led to the idea of a university for women in 2001, ARU’s formal launch with 29 student/co-creators in 2006, and our formal accreditation and operating license in 2011 as the first all-women’s university in Uganda.

From my school days, including at my own university, I have dedicated my life to rural transformation and sustainable development. And to do so by supporting change agency in local settings. The visionary and creative approach we developed and deploy permits genuine democratic participation by rural people in their own development activities, thus improving their ownership and leadership of their own development process. 

And we focus on women and the remarkable skills and capacity they provide for society. These attributes are well known but seldom explained in a strategic way. We tend to see women as compassionate, loving and nurturing human beings, but to me (inspired by my mother) I also see a very practical holistic approach to systemic action in society that typical development policies and programs tend to miss.

I am passionate because there is great opportunity to bring these forces to bear for society.

I am passionate because the sleeping genius in every person can be awoken this way.

I am passionate because of the approaches and local technologies ARU students are creating.

I am passionate because we now see, with both technical evidence and our own eyes across multiple years and places, that it is working. 

Most importantly I have the team around me to advance it. Those inspired and educated to envision and then create, and to do it over again, and again. This is the leadership, the students/co-creators (and graduates who continue the cycle), the regional community members, the government administrators and policymakers who see the impact and future potential, the formally trained professors, the regional and international networks we’re part of.

And I am well-positioned because, over several years, we have institutionalized and helped standardize the processes to accomplish this.

I am also in the formal position to advance it: Vice Chancellor of the African Rural University.

I have the training to advance it: University degrees in Development Management, Agricultural Engineering, and Environmental Citizenship and Leadership.

I have intellectual and emotional relationships to help advance it. For example, in addition to the ARU community (above), I am part of a global network of social entrepreneurs and the international Nourishment Economies Coalition, I have good mentors like Peter Senge and Robert Fritz and others. 

And I am well-positioned because I have experience to help inform our future actions.

Building with all of this, ARU has also developed learning relationships throughout East Africa, and insights and innovations worthy of exchange with other change-making educational institutions in the world. 

As a university student and community worker I was Chairman of the student’s hall at Kabanyoro University Farm. I opposed the country’s dictator, which earned me harassment by security agents and arrest by military police. I was held incommunicado, and in military prison for eight months. Of 680 people who passed through that prison, only eight of us survived. 

Upon my release, I went back and completed my university course at Makerere University, and began working in Kabarole District with an NGO as leader of a team of student volunteers. Unfortunately I unearthed cases of corruption. An assailant attacked me with a hand grenade one night. I survived. The organization was disbanded by the government.

Knowing that this mess was caused by greedy managers, I persuaded other former workers to start a new organization to serve people who were the victims of difficult circumstances. This is the URDT, including its unique girls and community-engagement school system and the womens community bank and other actions, which led (per story above) to our later creation of the African Rural University with its approach integrating traditional academics and student co-creation and village intelligence. 

Here we are today, dynamic and looking to the future.

I have learned a pattern in my own behaviors. When challenged, I tend to persist, which draws others into the fold of higher action. I see that the tension of situations helps us find higher solutions, and persisting inspires others.

Thus when held in prison for opposing rigged public elections, and avoiding six attempts to persuade me to escape (and be caught and shot!), I was released. My return to coursework at the university, instead of joining the rebels, astounded and attracted new confidants.

When attackers later targeted our university, I was notified that my relatives were arrested and I should run away. Instead I took a taxi to another university office and presented myself openly, and the situation normalized.

After university I worked as volunteer, agricultural office, and then mission lead for an NGO, but I discovered and reported massive corruption in the organization. There was an assassination attempt (killing one other), and partners offered to help me exile. Instead I organized with colleagues to create ARU’s mother organization (the URDT).

We now help enable the most promising young leaders – women in rural communities – with practical skills and action plans based on their own visions for tomorrow. 

ARU aligns social, economic, educational, gender and environmental situations in unique ways, flipping them from “social services and dependency” systems into true development systems for society.

Towards this systemic change, some ARU innovations include the following: Creating practical social and economic development curriculum based on the theory of structural tension, as developed in leading institutions elsewhere (including MIT), always combining theoretical and applied learning in the context of the creative tension identified by the student herself as she discovers the gaps between her own aspirations and her realities today. Creating the first all-womens university in East Africa. Integrating for every student, as condition of academic degree, a one month of practicum in their local communities and nine months of internship in local governments. Formalizing the professorship of, among others, village intelligence and Traditional Wisdom Specialists addressing health, ecology, farming, wildlife management, and traditional methods of governance.

 Essentially, ARU trains the most able change agents in society in visionary leadership through self-activation, systems thinking, and mastery of rural technologies that are essential for holistic and transformational rather than reductionist actions. And as those local people graduate they tend to work with local government and establish what we now call “centers of excellence” in participatory research and action.

The point is that those students become the innovators and much wider scale than I or ARU could achieve directly.

Our theory and methodology, as tested and refined over time, is now yielding strong results in human and rural transformation. It is based on the known principle: energy flows where it is easiest…the path of least resistance. In this case, applied to social systems.

We combine three factors to create transformational energy:

1. We engage people (as students/co-creators) who tend to see the whole (person, family, community, society), rather than just the parts. These tend to be young women.

2. We teach them skills for envisioning the future they want, and for creating their own approaches to achieve that future. This contrasts with their previous equilibrium of reacting continually to problems that arise. Since these people tend to see the whole, their visions and solutions are often systemic and regenerative in nature. We’d note that this visioning and creating principle and the curriculum we’ve developed to help standardize it is the product of years of work and study. It is fundamental to our entire theory of change.

3. We do this in the context of resources actually at hand for these people, in our rural and marginalized communities. Thus it is not just theoretical. In addition to core skills and knowledge in sciences and the humanities, we spotlight natural soils, farming, foods, nutrition, and ecosystem services (including water, biodiversity, and carbon), and collaborative relationships between people, and related traditional wisdom (nutrient-to-nourishment cycles manifested through culture and food and health and land management practices). These “factors of production,” using western economic language, are available but underappreciated in most places on Earth and in many economic theories.

When combined, these three factors channel themselves into “unconventional,” locally-driven development. It is truly transformative: to ability to make change understood in the mind, hearts, and hands of someone who sees the whole rather than just the parts, and has confidence and practical skills and local resources at hand. 

The numbers are derived from how many students and members of their families and communities participate directly. 

“Indirect impact” is much larger, on wider circles of people, through resulting improved health and economy and more.

Every ARU student’s formal “back home projects” engage family and community directly as co-creators. This is part of our core methodology for institutionalizing locally-led, transformative development. In addition, another 180 other communities across 27 regions in Western Uganda also participate in ARU’s required nine-months student internships.

Therefore, through 60 ARU students per class year (currently), as well as over 600 younger students in the girls school programs of our mother organization URDT, a total of around 9,500 community members are directly involved per year, usually in health, agriculture, environment, nutrition, sanitation, and income generation (which turns out to reflect the aspirations of these people as they set their own visions).

While the intensive nature of our program – combining the classroom and community action – limits the number of students we can admit each year, the structure of our program is replicable. We are currently working on a fivefold increase, including initial rollout in neighboring Tanzania and Rwanda, and with two additional ARU programs now proposed to the National Council for Higher Education in Uganda. Combined, within 3-5 years this will increase graduates per year from 60 to 300, thus multiplying our total community impact numbers accordingly.

Every graduate continues into the future, of course, so the direct impact is cumulative and ever-increasing over time. 

In parallel with a fivefold increase in ARU programs and thus number students and communities engaged each year (as noted above), we have substantive goals to advance the strategic topics around which ARU focuses learning and impact. These are the topics that bring forth the typically undervalued but powerful resources which rural (and other) people might deploy as they close gaps between their own visions and realities.

ARU aims to develop curricula, train students, and thus activate families and communities in two priority areas, which we’ve learned through our own experiences and with others who elevate similar insights elsewhere.

1. “Nourishment-cycle economics,” connecting tangible nutrient flows from natural ecosystems and soils through local food systems and tangible ecological restoration and pollution reduction actions, in ways which benefit public health as well as landscape and soil resilience, biodiversity,  water cycles, carbon sequestration, and basic food security, and the many social, economic, and cultural value propositions those engender.

2. “Caring Economy,” also at the heart of everything we have learned, quantifying and activating the tangible value for society that results from caring for each other – in the form of childhood development, collaborative action (rather than individualistic and dominance-based incentives), enabling others in our communities for success, and more –  leading to whole new levels of cross-sectoral value creation and innovation.

See below for mention of our partners and priorities in these areas.

Administrative cost of finding and enrolling target girl students, due in part to low income in rural communities.

Among rural students, the competitive appeal of “urban topics” taught in other universities, which can have greater marketing appeal because “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”

Lack of trained lecturers for teaching the unconventional courses we have designed (which will change as our own graduates advance in their careers and impact).

Predominant national educational policy favoring quantity of students, over recognition of the disproportionate impact of our kind of quality education and its direct engagement of much wider circles of communities, yielding fewer support resources from the Ministry of Education and some criticism of ARU for “low numbers.”

The costs of carrying out the Participatory Action Research with communities, which is essential to every ARU student’s education and degree qualifications, but involves long (and effective!) processes of community engagement, testing prototypes, and validation.

Some of our efforts follow in brief:

We are working to design more standardized courses for teachers and to equip them with pedagogical skill through e-learning.

Regarding the more conservative nature of traditional education systems, ARU now has membership the Vice Chancellors Forum, The East African University Council and The University Quality Assurance organization. Lobbying and advocacy for local transformative approach to development, in ARU and other institutions of higher education, is an ongoing process.

Regarding the appeal of “urban biased courses,” we are promoting that students not look at conventional traditional definitions of urban (haves) and rural (have-nots) as determinants of satisfaction and fulfillment, but recognize the gradual rural transformation with amenities, facilities, infrastructures and service delivery similar to those in urban centers (precisely through the initiatives of some of our own ARU graduates).

Regarding costs, ARU is partnering with students to create productive ventures (based on student aspirations as well) whose income can subsidize the tuition

Participatory Action Research, the communities are partners in each product from the word “go!” and we aspire that as they realize the benefits, and their potential to accelerate those benefits, they may be in position to contribute more, both in sweat equity and finance.

As indicated above, our thought and action partners around top strategic goals are PELUM (Participatory Ecological Land Use Management in East Africa), the Center for Partnership Studies, Nourish^N and the global Nourishment Economies Coalition, and the Ecosystem Restoration Camps movement.

In addition, we collaborate some on programs and financing with 27 local community and governance councils (participatory co-creation, internships for ARU students, and more); The African Food and Peace Foundation (capacity building of ARU staff); the Mustardseed Foundation (financing and co-creating programs through capacity building of staff); Professors Without Borders in the United Kingdom (exchange of academic personnel); Rotary Club International (support for implementation of innovative water and sanitation projects); the Research and Education Network (ICT connectivity for e-library and e-learning); UNESCO Chair (learning exchanges on youth employability). 

We operate as an accredited not-for-profit school system. As such, we earn modest tuition from students; we are eligible for some government education funding; we earn revenue for some research and consultancy services; we solicit grants from philanthropic funders and partners vested in our highest level mission in terms of supporting operations, strategic development, and capacity building; and we receive in-kind support through volunteer services and international partnerships that sometimes provide strategic or staffing support. The African Food and Peace Foundation has made a long-term commitment of helping generate financial support across our institution. 

We will continue and hopefully increase revenue or reduce operating costs under each income line: student tuitions, government educational support, research and consulting, grants, and in-kind services from others. We have some medium-term financial investments with fixed rates of return.

We see that opportunities for increasing systemic impact and transformative development are greater than our financial resources can support today, so we are enthusiastic.

The opportunity facing us is big, and we need resources to advance in scale. 

Funding would help accelerate our co-development with institutions in Tanzania and Rwanda. 

We also want to bring together and deepen actions on both our university curriculum and applied co-creation projects with the four strategic partners above (PELUM, the Center for Partnership Studies, Nourish^N and the global Nourishment Economies Coalition, and the Ecosystem Restoration Camps movement). Together we see promising alignment in insights, experience, examples, and motivation to manifest a substantial shift in paradigm, towards structural development economics of community-based innovation and value creation at the economic-bio-cultural overlaps of health, food, environment, gender, away from the old economics of individualism and dominance. We need resources to bring these pieces together, implement activities that apply them in practice and academic theory, and spread the resulting insights and tools through our collective relationships, with ARU at the hub.

Total ARU budget for 2020 is approximately US $700,000

We are applying for The Elevate Prize because we seek to elevate the lives and prosperity of millions of people who are typically thought of as too poor and too dependent, rather than as drivers of positive change for themselves and others; and to elevate the recognition and knowledge of how this can be done.

And we seek to elevate these aspects of economics of true development both in practice and in theory, actualizing how people in this marginalized situation are best positioned to lead the way out of it, and sharing those examples and data with other influential educational, policy and community development institutions.

And we seek to elevate the lives of marginalized girls and women, not just supporting and following their lead, but by showcasing how critical their role is in this entire story.

We believe the Elevate Prize will provide a unique package of recognition, critical feedback, and funding resources to help us advance each of these areas. The Elevate Prize package of recognition, feedback, and funding will sharpen and enable our actions and partnerships for each of the strategic priorities outlined above.

We believe we have the intellectual, oversight, and support network partners in place to advance decisively. 

However, subject to our capacity to manage more relationships without distracting from core operations, we would value suggestions if you spot a practical and aligned opportunity. 

I would stress that it is the combination of intellectual engagement, direct implementation actions, and collaborative communications and publicity to draw attention and sense of momentum that makes these partnerships most valuable.

I note that at this time we do not have all the financial resources needed to proceed full speed with all of our next-step ambitions as outlined herein.