Makerere University in Uganda is a clear case of an African university actively resisting knowledge reintegration. Early this century Makerere University, with the support of Ford Foundation, almost became the first university in Africa to embrace knowledge reintegration under a project in the then Faculty of Law called ITHPEP (The Interdisciplinary Teaching of Human Rights, Peace and Ethics Project in Makerere University).

The project designed a policy for interdisciplinary education and research in the 21st century. The policy was adopted by the university senate and approved by the university council. However, it was destined to abort because the university simultaneously made a new academic policy called Akiiki Mujaju Policy, which re-entrenched the university’s commitment to disciplinarity and multidisciplinarity.

It rendered the policy on interdisciplinarity a non-starter because it made it optional and would, therefore contribute to the upward movement of academics in their careers. In fact the policy emphasised that interdisciplinarity would not contribute to an academic’s career development.

Thus, Makerere University completely ignored the wind of change ushered in by the current of knowledge integration and reintegration. It failed to seize the opportunity to lead academically in Africa in the culture of integration and reintegration of knowledge.

Accordingly, the knowledge cultures of interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, crossdisciplinarity and non-disciplinarity remain alien to the academia of Makerere University in this 21^st century of knowledge integration and reintegration. When the university recently celebrated its first 100 years of existence, it was more or less celebrating how far it had gone with disciplinarity.

In effect, with the Akiiki Mujaju policy, it decided to go beyond 100 years with disciplinarity. Even most of the old and new African universities are stuck on the disciplinary road at the wrong time when interdisciplinarity, crossdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and nondisciplinarity are making inroads into the largely non-integrating academia.

The only African university, which embraced the knowledge culture of interdisciplinarity early in the 21^st century was Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST). However, there is a growing current of interdisciplinarity in Kenyan universities. The knowledge cultures of non-disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and crossdisciplinarity remain largely alien to the academia of Africa in a century of new knowledge production, integration and reintegration.

The century of new knowledge production, integration and reintegration requires educating to go beyond well into the non-disciplinary realm; the extra-disciplinary realm – beyond hierarchies. This should be the way forward for every institution of higher learning in every country on the globe. Every individual in higher learning centres needs to be exposed to the new knowledge market of new knowledge production (eg Gibbons, et al (2007) and the new marketplace of interconnected ideas. Later will be too late.

Those who arrive late will be the academic and intellectual dinosaurs of the century. Their minds will belong to the 20^th century or before and they will be just bodies with minds that do not fit in. If they are teachers, they will be an unwanted burden of the century misteaching the young generation of learners to fit in the past, not the future.

According to Gibbons, et al (2007), with new knowledge production, the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies are changing. On the other hand, Peters in 1992, cited by Oweyegha-Afunaduula and Mahir Balunywa (2019), tells us not to ignore cyberspace corporations, which will be very fast-acting, transient and composed of bright, creative, high-tech nomads who will coalesce into work units for dynamic market opportunities. Personnel turnovers will be high as tasks are completed and cyberspace workers decide to migrate to other opportunities. A very productive informal network will form as cyberspace workers leverage their rich set of experiences and contacts (Peters, 1992: 438). That is the science and workplace environment of shifting to a knowledge-based society.

The terms cyberspace and corporate virtual workplace are now common place in the world of new knowledge production but still largely alien to the world of intradisciplinary (or disciplinary) knowledge production and workplace.

Hakken (2003) addressed the knowledge landscape of cyberspace. Even if we looked back to the future, there is no real going back. We must get out of our cocoons and move on. We must be ready to disorganise and undiscipline our predominantly intradisciplinary knowledge base in order to reorganise ourselves for the knowledge-based society, which is increasingly getting dominated by new knowledge production and new knowledge workers, less stupid, less ignorant and less arrogant and ready to learn anew.

The era of academic specialisation and overspecialisation is gone. Universities still producing graduates in pure disciplines are condemning their graduates to the past and leaving others to belong to the 21^st Century and beyond. They will remain irrelevant and a burden to the era of knowledge integration and reintegration. The trend of recreating integrated knowledge was initiated long ago.  Every university must be integral to it or perish.

It is retrogressive, therefore, to preach separating the sciences – the humanities, social science and natura science. President Tibuhaburwa Museveni of Uganda, who is now the global icon of the politics of pure science (or purity of science), is vigorously planting the mustard seed of superiority of pure science and inferiority of the social sciences and humanities. To convince the young generation of Ugandans that pure science is superior, he has introduced discrimination in educational institutions by paying those in and linked to natural science much higher than those in the humanities and social science.

It is “divide and rule” in education at a time when wisdom dictates that knowledge integration is the way forward in the 21^st century. His choice of continuing disintegration is encouraging further proliferation and intensification of academic hegemony through specialisation, especially in the natural sciences and attendant professions. This is an example of failed leadership in the 21^st century because it is misleading educational institutions, knowledge workers, education managers and knowledge seekers.

The world – academic and real – wants political leadership – integral leadership – for integration and reintegration of the sciences and society, not continued disintegration in the century of integration. The century does not respect the artificial boundaries between knowledge communities and cultural communities. This desires that we reconsider the scholarship of teaching and learning to fully integrate the education enterprise and/or institution if we are to achieve meaningful and effective development, transformation and progress in this century and beyond. With disconnected knowledge, graduate employability is no longer a prized thing.

There is a quest to improve the learning experience and produce more wholesome learners who can cope with a century of accelerating changes ahead, who value holistic approach to education and life, and can venture into the marketplace of ideas without fear or favour. We have no alternative but to go forward in the 21^st century along the knowledge reintegration path. We have to prepare students or learners for the 21^st century workforce, which is distancing itself from the 20^th century – a century of disciplinary hegemony.

Interdisciplinarity, crossdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and non-disciplinarity is collectively the new team science, which will make students and practitioners to fit in the cyberage, driven by nondisciplinary teamwork practice.

This bibliography has been prepared for the global academia in general and the African academia in particular to make them adequately aware of the fact that the world is fast-moving away from disintegration of knowledge and towards integration or reintegration of knowledge via new cultures of inquiry and knowing.

We who can bring about knowledge reintegration, and thus change in knowledge production cannot remain inert and silent. If we do, future generations will blame us saying: ‘You were there when the changes were coming but you did nothing.’

However, it should be stressed that we are still far from complete integration and reintegration of knowledge just as we talk of regional economic integration in different parts of the world. We need integrated and integrating centres of knowledge to produce a cadre of graduates with integrated and integrating minds to act as integration and integrating agents in the 21^st century. We cannot hope to achieve much in the quest for integration and reintegration of knowledge or our world if we continue forcing humanity’s disciplinary world along the path of integration and reintegration.

For God and my country – Uganda!                                             

• A Tell report / By Prof Oweyegha-Afunaduula, a former professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences of the Makerere University, Uganda