Public intellectuals in Uganda are individuals who engage in public discourse and contribute to societal conversations, often alongside their academic or professional careers. These individuals leverage their knowledge and expertise to address issues relevant to Uganda’s social, political and cultural landscape. However, they are an endangered species.

In 2023, Sserunjogi Charles Dickens examined the historical role of scholars and public intellectuals in Uganda’s post-independence politics: and given a critical study of the gang of four that mushroomed during the reign of the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) at the end of the 1970s.  The Gang of Four were Edward Bitanywaine Rugumayo, Dani Wadada Nabudere, Omwony Ojok and Yashpal Tandon. 

Earlier, Daily Monitor (2018) wondered where Uganda’s public intellectuals and, hence, public intellectualism had disappeared to. The Independent newspaper noted that between 1960 and 1990 intellectuals exerted great influence on public policy discourse and their views were of great significance to the nation. The academics would go beyond the confines of the narrow specialisations participate in national debates on issues of national import and come face to face with leaders.

Apparently, this was still the case when I joined the academic staff of Makerere University at the beginning of the 1990s and it continued well into the new millennium. I was one of the key participants in those debates. Uganda became a glaring example of a country which experienced intellectual death and the death of the public intellectual (Kato, 2023; Oweyegha-Afunaduula, 2025). By the time I retired from academic life in 2009, public intellectualism in Uganda was almost dead (Oweyegha-Afunaduula, cited by Kato, 2023).

Whatever the debate concerning intellectuals, thought leaders, think tank thinkers, and public intellectuals globally, public intellectuals are now needed more than ever, particularly in Uganda where ignoramuses, charlatans and fake thinkers now predominate in every sphere of human life and endeavour, and the politicians and their sycophants have consumated the traditional intellectual and public intellectual spaces. They serve a new and vital purpose. They need to analyse and criticise popular thought leaders.

Public intellectuals are necessary to filter the quality thinkers from the charlatans. Besides, we need public intellectuals capable of engaging in critical thinking, critical analysis and generation of alternative analyses and ideas, and debating without fear or favour. Public intellectuals know enough about many things to be able to point out intellectual charlatans.

If politics is to deliver in terms of quality development, quality transformation and quality progress in all spheres of human endeavour, the unity of politics and public intellectualism must be pursued and enhanced. Public intellectuals must be allowed to manifest intellectually in the public space. Otherwise, the public space becomes a theatre for political and economic manipulation to the detriment of our current and future generations of Ugandans. Already development, transformation and progress of Uganda and Ugandans seem to be things of the past. Politicians and their backers have reduced everything to money. Thinkers are despised and crooks are glorified.

Unfortunately, institutional power has now combined with political power to squeeze intellectual power out of the institutions of higher learning in favour of academic power. Institutional power refers to the influence and control that established organisations, such as governments, universities, corporations or religious institutions, have over individuals and society. It stems from the formal and informal structures, resources and authority these institutions wield, enabling them to shape rules, norms, and behaviors. 

This power can manifest in various ways, including setting policies, allocating resources, and influencing public opinion. Political power refers to the ability of individuals, groups, or institutions to influence or control the behavior of others within a political context. It encompasses the capacity to make decisions, set agendas, and shape public policy. This influence can be exerted through various means, including coercion, persuasion, and the manipulation of social structures and institutions. 

“Academic power” can refer to several related concepts: the influence and authority within academic institutions, the power structures that govern them, or the capacity to influence knowledge and discourse. It can also refer to the individual ability to succeed academically. Academic power today prefer reversal to scholasticism and academicism at the expense of intellectualism.

Together institutional power, political power and academic power have coalesced their influences to almost completely kill intellectualism in the universities and public intellectualism in the public spaces in Uganda. Many fake ideas of the politicians and institutional intellectuals deliberately escape the scrutiny of the public intellectuals.

Those public intellectuals can only engage in critical thought on the fake ideas and offer alternative analyses in print media, social media, electronic media or end up just writing articles for publication in print and digital media. This status quo has helped presidentialism to grow and mushroom, and for the President to become the main source of ideas, as academics concentrate on academic production and building their careerism.

If there was a period of post-intellectualism in the 20th century characterised by decline in democracy, reason and responsibility (Wood, 1996), what was a twentieth century phenomenon spilt over into the 21st century and is exemplified by Uganda. Here intellectuals are despised and almost squeezed out of the universities. More seriously, public intellectuals are so threatened that their space is now occupied by charlatans whose reasoning serves the status quo and their ideas go untested in the marketplace of ideas.

In the universities it is the thought leaders that predominate in the disciplines, where multidisciplinarity is tolerated but the new and different knowledge production cultures or systems of crossdisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and extradisciplinarity are hotly resisted. Yet these knowledge cultures or systems, expand the visions of thinkers and enable them to think critically and reason better and accept responsibility for their failures more readily.

There is a suggestion that our universities should take the field of study called Futures Studies seriously and begin to develop tools in academia necessary to prepare public intellectuals adequately so their projections, visions and insights about the future are not overly singular, simplistic and emotionally loaded (Fergnani, 2023). This, however, requires the universities to open up to the new and different cultures or systems of knowledge production – crossdisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and extradisciplinarity.

In most, if not all universities in Uganda in particular and Africa in general not is the field of Futures Studies absent, but the new systems of knowledge production are decades away to be accepted on the campuses.

Revival of the public intellectual in Uganda should be a must. However, it is necessary that power does not emphasise fear as a tool of governance as this will deter people from entering the public space to articulate and clarify issues for society. If the public intellectuals re-emerge in Uganda the public should demand more of our public intellectuals when they discuss the future. We have the right and responsibility to both forgive them and demand more from them. Our future(s) is at stake (e.g, Alex Fergnani, 2023). However, genuine public intellectuals should talk about our past, present and future responsibly and do not just toe the line of thinking desired by power. If they do, they will fail our society, which has already been failed by the political leadership, which has chosen to be selfish, ethnicitists and overly consumptive.

in this era of increasingly complex (wicked) problems, we need to de-emphasise reliance on thought leaders, consultancies and think tanks, all of which tend to have entrenched interests and to ally with power to maintain the status quo. I suggest that we need to resuscitate the intellectual in general and the public intellectual in particular, to keep decision-makers on their toes, and to continue articulating and clarifying issues for society. We need public intellectuals to be at the centre of political, social processes and environmental processes, let alone discourses of any kind, to make sense out of nonsense.

For God and my country.

• A Tell report / By Oweyegha-Afunaduula / Environmental Historian and Conservationist Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA), Seeta, Mukono, Uganda.

About the Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA)

The CCTAA was innovated by Hyuha Mukwanason, Oweyegha-Afunaduula and Mahir Balunywa in 2019 to the rising decline in the capacity of graduates in Uganda and beyond to engage in critical thinking and reason coherently besides excellence in academics and academic production. The three scholars were convinced that after academic achievement the world outside the ivory tower needed graduates that can think critically and reason coherently towards making society and the environment better for human gratification. They reasoned between themselves and reached the conclusion that disciplinary education did not only narrow the thinking and reasoning of those exposed to it but restricted the opportunity to excel in critical thinking and reasoning, which are the ultimate aim of education. They were dismayed by the truism that the products of disciplinary education find it difficult to tick outside the boundaries of their disciplines; that when they provide solutions to problems that do not recognise the artificial boundaries between knowledges, their solutions become the new problems. They decided that the answer was a new and different medium of learning and innovating, which they characterised as “The Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis” (CCTAA).