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Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim

Your Excellency President Museveni,
Your Excellency the First Lady and Minister of Education and Sports, Mama Janet Museveni,
Excellencies,
Distinguished Guests,

It is a great pleasure for me to join you in celebrating this milestone in the history of the Aga Khan University, and our partnership with the Government of Uganda. I am also very happy that my sister Princess Zahra and brother Prince Aly are here to share this special moment.

I would like to begin by conveying my deepest gratitude to Your Excellency President Museveni for providing the University with an exceptional site for its campus, and for your steadfast vision and enduring support for this project. I also express my heartfelt appreciation for the enabling environment that the Government of Uganda has created for the Aga Khan Development Network.

Your Excellency, the decades-long partnership between the Government of Uganda and the Ismaili Imamat has enabled our institutions to help improve the quality of life for all Ugandans across the country, and across multiple sectors, including health care, education, banking, insurance, energy, hospitality, and manufacturing. We are deeply grateful for your support.

This investment in AKU’s new academic and student housing facilities, together with its hospital, embody the belief of our late father, which I share, that Ugandans deserve the very best access to international quality higher education and health care. The University’s campuses across Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda create an integrated system to share knowledge and expertise, and allow the mobility of faculty and students across the region.

Our commitment to international standards of excellence will, I believe, bring transformational impact to Uganda and to the region. It is a known fact that poor-quality health care costs as many lives as lack of access to care. Moreover, despite spending years in school, countless young people acquire only a fraction of the knowledge and skills they are meant to. Poor health and limited education rob individuals of their potential. At this campus, AKU will invest in developing the potential of Ugandans. My hope is that ambitious young people and skilled professionals will not need to leave their home country to study or practise at the highest level. And many Ugandans will not have to travel abroad to obtain advanced health care.

Our pursuit of excellence will go hand-in-hand with a commitment to access for the disadvantaged. AKU already provides nearly 60 million dollars annually in financial assistance to patients and students across its campuses. Here in Uganda, we will expand our programmes to enable access to life-saving care and life-changing education.

Excellence must be grounded in relevance. A significant aspect of AKU’s impact is tied to its research agenda that strives to address real, local challenges through knowledge creation and innovation that improve the quality of life. At this campus, we will be addressing Uganda’s specific disease burden, genetic profile, and environmental context. We will seek to contribute to the development of solutions powered by new technologies such as artificial intelligence.

All of this is only possible because of the generosity, commitment and dedication of our wonderful donors, both local and international, and many of whom are of Ugandan origin. I am very happy to see so many of them here today. We are equally grateful to Germany’s BMZ and KfW for their support not only to this project but to many others across the AKDN institutions. Please accept my heartfelt thanks for all that you have made possible – here in Uganda and across our University. Your generosity will benefit countless lives and generations to come.

Our architects, Legorreta, also deserve recognition and our gratitude. The buildings we are inaugurating reveal the power of design to support and to inspire the quest for knowledge. They also reflect the AKDN’s commitment to addressing climate change. Designed to meet international energy-efficiency standards and to be powered by significant solar photovoltaic capacity, they will contribute to our efforts to achieve net-zero emissions.

As we move forward, AKU will continue to benefit tremendously from our partnerships with academia, government, civil society and others. I am pleased that AKU is pursuing effective working relationships with public-sector institutions in Uganda. It is partnership that turns ripples of change into waves of progress.

Distinguished guests, it is my conviction that the creation of this campus will prove to be a significant milestone in the history of higher education and health here in Uganda. As we embark on this new chapter of AKU’s story, our partners and generous supporters are among its primary authors. The leaders educated, the lives saved, and the knowledge generated will be their legacy.

Your Excellency, Mama Janet, I am confident that the leaders emerging from this institution will advance individual well-being and national progress in fulfillment of the steadfast vision and enduring support that have brought us to this moment.

Thank you.