Contribution of Madrasah System to the Development of Human Resource in Uganda and its Neighbouring Countries

Generally speaking, Muslims of Eastern Africa in general, and of Uganda in particular, lagged behind in education for a long period of time. This fact goes back to the time when Islam penetrated the East African coast. The interest of Arabs who introduced and taught Islam to the people of the coast was trade and many of them were neither trained nor did they possess any professional skills to propagate Islam. They did this job on a voluntary basis in anticipation of God’s reward. On the contrary, the Christian missionaries who came to the region were skilled, equipped and had been officially sent by various authorities to do the job of spreading Christianity. Therefore, when they arrived in the region, they embarked on building well equipped schools and all their activities were geared towards promoting Christianity among the whole population which scared Muslim parents from taking their children to these schools. Consequently, Muslim schools – mainly madrasah pl. madaris, were built to counter the force of missionary schools. These madaris, however, were not by any standards, comparable with the missionary schools. Unfortunately, this situation has continued to this day in some of the madaris due to numerous reasons, some of which are of the Muslims’ own making and which I believe could be avoided provided that the Muslims put their heads together. In spite of this fact, these schools have contributed highly to the development of human resource in Uganda and elsewhere, as highlighted in this paper. May Allah help me. Amiin.