MHI In Africa Images – Part 01

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His Highness the Aga Khan in East Africa for His First Official Visit of The Golden Jubilee

Last updated: 23 August 2007

22 August 2007 His Highness the Aga Khan lays the foundation stone for the Aga Khan Academy, Kampala in the presence of His Excellency Professor Gilbert Bukenya, Vice President of the Republic of Uganda

24 August 2007
His Highness the Aga Khan ends East African tour:
Press Release

22 August 2007
Aga Khan to build Uganda’s first Aga Khan Academy:
Press Release
Speech by His Highness the Aga Khan
Welcome Address by Salim Bhatia
Photographs

21 August 2007
Foundation Stone Ceremony of the Bujagali Hydropower Project:
Remarks by His Highness the Aga Khan
Speech by President Yoweri Museveni
Photographs
State House – The Republic of Uganda: News Release

19 August 2007
Aga Khan Announces the East African Community’s First Regional University to be based in Arusha:
Press Release in English
Communiqu� de presse en fran�ais
Photographs

18 August 2007
State Banquet, Dar es Salaam:
Speech by His Highness the Aga Khan

14 August 2007
Aga Khan Foundation Celebrates 25 Years of the Madrasa Programme:
Press Release
Speech by His Highness the Aga Khan
Photographs

Aga Khan Academy Mombasa Builds Residential Campus
to Welcome Students from Across Kenya:
Press Release
Speech by Salim Bhatia
Photographs
Video

13 August 2007 His Excellency President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya welcomes His Highness the Aga Khan to State House in Nairobi, Kenya

13 August 2007
Aga Khan Receives Kenya’s Highest Medal of Honour:
Press Release
Speech by President Kibaki of Kenya
Remarks by His Highness the Aga Khan at the State Banquet
Photographs

Aga Khan University Announces the Faculty of Health Sciences
in East Africa:
Speech by His Highness the Aga Khan
Remarks by Mr. Firoz Rasul, President of Aga Khan University
Press Release
Photographs
Video

His Highness the Aga Khan Meets with His Excellency
President Mwai Kibaki at State House (Photographs)

His Highness the Aga Khan Arrvies in East Africa (Video – on TheIsmaili.org)

12 August 2007
Aga Khan in East Africa for First Golden Jubilee Visit (Media Advisory)

NOTES

Golden Jubilee of His Highness the Aga Khan
His Highness the Aga Khan completed his 50th year as the 49th hereditary Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims on 11th July 2007, succeeding his grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah. The Aga Khan leads a community of 15 million Ismaili Muslims living in some 25 countries around the world and is a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family). In the Ismaili tradition, the Imam’s Jubilee celebrations offer occasions to launch new social, cultural and economic development projects. In keeping with the ethics of the faith, these projects aspire to improve the quality of life for the most vulnerable in society. During the Jubilee year, the Aga Khan is expected to travel to a number of countries to meet with members of the Ismaili community and visit projects of the AKDN. He is also likely to announce the creation of new development institutions and projects and the significant expansion of existing ones.

The Aga Khan Development Network
His Highness the Aga Khan is founder and Chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), a group of private, non-denominational development agencies working to empower communities and individuals to improve living conditions and opportunities, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, Central and South Asia, and the Middle East. The Network’s nine development agencies focus on social, cultural and economic development for all citizens, regardless of gender, origin or religion. The AKDN’s underlying ethic is compassion for the vulnerable in society. Its annual budget for philanthropic activity is in excess of US$ 300 million.

Scource : AKDN.org

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Foundation Stone Ceremony of the Bujagali Hydropower Project

21August 2007

	His Highness the Aga Khan and His Excellency the President Yoweri Museveni, lay the foundation stone for the Bujagali Hydropower Project, Jinja. The US$ 770 million project is the country’s first private hydroelectric power project, and is expected to significantly lower the price of electricity in Uganda. The plant is also one of the largest independent power plants in sub-Saharan Africa. File size: 691 KB Photo credit: AKDN/Gary Otte
	His Excellency President Yoweri Museveni addresses the gathering at the foundation stone-laying ceremony of the Bujagali Hydropower Project in Jinja. File size: 433 KB Photo credit: AKDN/Gary Otte
	His Highness the Aga Khan welcomes His Excellency President Yoweri Museveni to the Bujagali site. Looking on are Prince Amyn Aga Khan, Chairman of the Executive Committee, Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED) and Mahmood Ahmed, Resident Representative, AKDN Uganda. File size: 747 KB Photo credit: Gary Otte

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Speech by His Highness the Aga Khan -21 August 2007

Speech by His Highness the Aga Khan

Remarks by His Highness the Aga Khan at the
Foundation Stone Ceremony of the Bujagali Hydropower Project
Uganda – 21 August 2007

Your Excellency President Museveni
Honourable David Migreko, Minister for Energy
Honourable Ministers
Excellencies
Distinguished Guests

Let me begin by expressing my warmest thanks for your kind introduction and for this wonderful welcome.

What a great pleasure it is to be a part of this historic occasion. I am particularly pleased that it comes during my Golden Jubilee year – and indeed at the outset of my Jubilee visits to places in the world which have had special meaning to me – and to the Ismaili community – over the past fifty years. I know I will always remember this day – and this place – as a special highlight of these celebrations.

The laying of this foundation stone is indeed an historic moment. The project we celebrate today is an unprecedented endeavour.

As Nizar Juma has pointed out, it represents the largest single private sector investment of any sort in East Africa and the largest independent power project in sub-Saharan Africa. I understand it is the largest single power investment ever made by the International Finance Corporation – anywhere in the world.

I must tell you that the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development is very proud to have been the catalyst in advancing this project – and very happy to be a continuing part of it.

Our ceremony today is both an ending and a beginning.

It marks the end of a long road of dreams and plans, discussions and debates, negotiations and bids, adjustments and agreements – with a wide array of partners. It is thus a moment for extending warmest thanks and congratulations to everyone who has participated in this process – some of you for some time now – from both the public sector and the private sector – from Uganda, and from so many other countries.

We are deeply indebted to you all – for your patience and your stamina, for your imagination and your vision, and for your commitment to Uganda and East Africa.

You have already heard about President Museveni’s suggestion that a statue at State House might have been a good incentive for pushing this project along. I might observe, however, that if every person who played a key role in the project’s success were to be awarded a statue, the State House in Kampala would have to add a whole additional wing.

What has emerged from this intense, yet tireless, effort, in a relatively short period of time, was not a statue or a building – but something which can still be described as a truly splendid structure.

This will soon be true in a physical sense here at Bujagali. But it is also true in an organizational and a financial sense, as support for this project has been assembled from so many institutions and so many places.

It has not been easy through the years to attract traditional, private investment capital into ambitious infrastructure projects in the developing world. And yet, with the strong commitment of the Government of Uganda, the critical backing of Sithe Global Power and other private investors, and with the key support of the World Bank Group and other highly-respected multi-national lenders, the debt and equity financing for this project was actually over-subscribed!

What a wonderful breakthrough this has been – and what a powerful model it can be for the future!!

But if today marks the culmination of an intricate process of planning and organization, it also marks the beginning of another demanding journey – the process of executing and instituting our plans. At the end of this road, however, lies an exciting new world of opportunity – for the people of this region, for the people of this country, and indeed for the whole of East Africa.

As you know, the government and the people of Uganda have made substantial economic strides in recent years – and they are to be congratulated for these achievements. But in Uganda – as in many other countries – the greater those strides may be, the more they bump up against a formidable barrier – a shortage of dependable power. The greater the progress in other fields, the more severe this problem can become – as the inevitable load-shedding and loss of power too frequently reminds us.

This problem, of course, extends well beyond Uganda. It is striking to me that the continent of Africa, with fully one-sixth of the world’s population, produces only four percent of the world’s electricity – and most of that is in its northernmost and southernmost countries. The great issue of development, everywhere in the world, is whether the power supply will grow more quickly than the economy, or whether economic growth will outstrip the power supply. Uganda has been suffering from the latter condition – and the consequences have been grave.

Today, only five percent of the total population of Uganda – and only one percent of the rural population – have access to the grid supply of electric power. Even for those who do have access, electricity tariffs have more than doubled in the last four years. These skyrocketing costs work to reinforce the cycle of poverty for millions, and they badly impair the ability of Ugandan companies to compete in international markets – and thus to expand employment. The result of continuing power shortfalls can be a downward spiral of disappointment and discouragement.

The Bujugali project was not merely a desirable option as we began to examine it a few years ago. It was a fundamental necessity.

But just imagine for a moment the transformation that can take place when the cost of power is cut by more than half, as it will be in the early stages of this project, and then is later cut in half again. Think of the difference it will make when the supply of power is adequate to the needs, and massive load-shedding becomes a distant memory.

Bujagali alone will not accomplish our goals, of course. The energy challenge – here and elsewhere – will require a multi-faceted response, including bold innovations in the way we both produce and consume energy.

I believe that the Bujagali project will propel a great chain of positive developments – an exciting upward spiral.

Let me mention one other positive aspect of the Bujagali project.

Everywhere in the world today, people are searching for ways to reduce the threat of global warming both by limiting greenhouse gas emissions and by fighting the blight of deforestation. The key to both efforts is to move away from plant and fossil fuels, and to depend instead on renewable energy sources. Hydro electric power fulfills that goal. It is “clean” energy – advancing sustainable development while minimizing its environmental impact.

If this were not the case, we would not have taken up this project, and we could not have attracted such a wide range of public-minded supporters to join in this endeavour. We feel deeply that environmental goals and development goals must be part of a Complementary Agenda – we can serve one set of goals only if we also serve the other. We are proud that the Bujagali project advances that Complimentary Agenda.

The project we launch today is just one example of how the Aga Khan fund for Economic Development is responding to its mandate as an agent of change and growth – from Afghanistan to Tajikistan, from Mozambique to Mali. Another example in the energy field is the West Nile Rural Electrification Company, as has already been mentioned.

From the other side of the Continent, we have just recently learnt that the Ivory Coast Government has approved a major expansion of our Azito power project – one that will enable Azito to help meet the growing needs of the Ivory Coast and respond to the critical energy shortfalls in the neighboring country of Mali.

AKFED’s constant goal is to build institutions of enduring excellence, embracing state-of-the-art technologies and world-class standards. In many cases, AKFED’s initial investments have come in situations which were too uncertain for traditional private investors. Often, these projects were so effectively transformed that they could later be floated publicly on national stock exchanges in Asia and Africa.

AKFED works in many fields – from insurance, banking, micro-finance, and media, to a variety of manufacturing enterprises, to the tourism and leisure sector. It is presently creating four new national air transport companies, linking various countries throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Step by step, each of AKFED’s projects will make a special contribution, we trust, to an upward spiral of progress. And the project we will develop here – at Bujagali, will be a particularly proud example.

From the very beginnings of civilization, the use of water – intelligently, respectfully, and creatively – has been at the very center of human concerns. The Nile River itself has been a great source and sustainer of life for thousands of years. Today, we repeat and renew that ancient story once again as we lay this Foundation Stone – and thus signal the opening of a new era in African history.

I salute all of you, respectfully and gratefully, for sharing with us in this great endeavour.

Thank you.

Scource : AKDN.org

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Aga Khan Sees a Bright Future for Eastern Africa

Kampala, Uganda, August 24th, 2007 – His Highness the Aga Khan said Africa’s enormous potential made him optimistic about the continent’s future. “My optimism grows out of several observations: beginning with the continuing rich potential of Africa’s natural resources – including the remarkable talents and the resilient spirit of its peoples.”

The spiritual leader of the Ismaili community made the remarks during a banquet he hosted in honour of Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni. Uganda was the last leg of the Aga Khan’s 12-day tour of East Africa as part of his Golden Jubilee visits.

“This is a special evening for me – the closing moments of the first of my Golden Jubilee visits to places which have had particular meaning for the Ismaili Community, for the institutions of the Aga Khan Development Network, and for me, personally, over the past half century,” he said.

The Ismaili leader praised Uganda’s and Africa’s new spirit of pluralism and said that the region deserved excellence in development.

“If one key to unlocking the potential of Uganda, and all of Africa, is a spirit of pluralism, then another key should be a commitment to excellence. There was a time, earlier in my Imamat, when mediocrity was considered tolerable here because it was good enough for Africa, he said.

The Ismaili leader urged the African nations to see diversity and difference as a source of potential strength in the increasingly globalised world. He noted that adherence to normal world-class standards was once seen as unrealistic for Africa. But he said that view was no longer sustainable.

“But in the rapidly globalizing world of the 21st century, the progress of every country and continent will depend on its ability to meet universal standards. To settle for less is an increasingly dangerous option,” he said.

The emphasis on quality and excellence has been a recurring theme of the Aga Khan’s visit to East Africa which was punctuated by announcements of new quality educational institutions. Earlier on Wednesday in Kampala, the Ismaili leader presided over a foundation stone laying ceremony for a new Aga Khan Academy in Kampala that will provide quality education for exceptionally gifted children.

Last week in Tanzania, the Aga Khan announced plans to build a major university campus in Arusha – seat of the East African Community. The new campus will be part of the Aga Khan University (AKU), becoming the East African Community’s first regional institution of higher education. The Tanzania announcement came just days after the Ismaili leader lay the foundation stone for a new AKU Faculty of Health and Sciences- a US $250 million health sciences campus to be established in Nairobi, Kenya.

“In all of these efforts, we see ourselves as partners with the people of East Africa,” ended the Aga Khan. “It is in that spirit of partnership, then, that I conclude this journey, grateful for what we have been able to do together in the past, excited by the things we will be attempting together in the future, and looking forward to many return visits to this very special place, “ said the Ismaili leader.

For more information please contact:
Semin Abdulla
Information Officer
Secretariat of His Highness the Aga Khan
information@aiglemont.org
Tel: + 254 733 530 053

NOTES

The Aga Khan Development Network
His Highness the Aga Khan is founder and Chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), a group of private, non-denominational development agencies working to empower communities and individuals to improve living conditions and opportunities, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, Central and South Asia, and the Middle East. The Network’s nine development agencies focus on social, cultural and economic development for all citizens, regardless of gender, origin or religion. The AKDN’s underlying ethic is compassion for the vulnerable in society. Its annual budget for social development is in excess of US$ 300 million.

Golden Jubilee of His Highness the Aga Khan
His Highness the Aga Khan completed his 50th year as the 49th hereditary Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims on 11th July 2007, succeeding his grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah. The Aga Khan leads a community of 15 million Ismaili Muslims living in some 25 countries around the world and is a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family). In the Ismaili tradition, the Imam’s Jubilee celebrations offer occasions to launch new social, cultural and economic development projects. In keeping with the ethics of the faith, these projects aspire to improve the quality of life for the most vulnerable in society. During the Jubilee year, the Aga Khan is expected to travel to a number of countries to meet with members of the Ismaili community and visit projects of the AKDN. He is also likely to announce the creation of new development institutions and projects and the significant expansion of existing ones.

SCOURCE : AKDN.org

Ismailiworld – Be Unite
ismailiworld@gmail.com

Ismailiworld – Be Unite

Speech by His Highness the Aga Khan -22 August 2007

Speech by His Highness the Aga Khan

Remarks by His Highness the Aga Khan at the
Foundation Stone Laying Ceremony of the Aga Khan Academy
Kampala – 22 August 2007

Your Excellency Vice President Professor Gilbert Bukenya
The Right Honourable Speaker

The Right Honourable Prime Minister
Your Worship the Mayor
Honourable Ministers
Excellencies
Distinguished Guests

It is a very great joy for me to be here today, and I am most grateful to the Vice President – and all of you – for joining us. This is indeed a special celebration – in a truly magnificent setting.

Let me extend, at the very start, my heartfelt thanks to the person who made this beautiful site available for the building of a new Aga Khan Academy. He is Amirali Karmali, known affectionately throughout Uganda as Mzee Mukwano. We are most deeply grateful to Amirali and his family for their extraordinary generosity.

I know I speak for everyone here in describing this gift as a truly inspiring one.

The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation – in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters. I am confident that future generations of students and teachers – who will come to this Academy from around the region and around the world – will feel a profound sense of inspiration as they look out on this superb landscape.

As you have heard, the new Academy in Kampala will be one of 18 Academies in 14 countries which will be developed over the next 15 years. Together, they will constitute an inter-related community of learning – exchanging students and teachers, sharing ideas and insights. And they will also share a variety of environmental experiences. Some, like the first Academy at Mombasa, will be in ocean-side settings, other will be placed in high mountain environments, still others will be built in desert terrains or forested areas – or, as in Kampala, at the side of a beautiful lake. As our students and teachers experience these remarkable surroundings, I hope they will develop what I would call a sense of “environmental pluralism”- to accompany the appreciation for cultural pluralism which we will also hope will be one of the programme’s hallmarks.

As you know, these ceremonies are part of my Golden Jubilee observances. I have welcomed this anniversary year as an opportunity to think back over the past half century – to reflect on the challenges we have faced, the goals we have met, and the lessons we have been learning. In this process, I will be traveling to places which have been of particular importance for me, and for the Ismaili community, and it is most appropriate that Uganda is among the first of these visits.

As I make these journeys, I am also announcing a number of new projects – including this Academy in Kampala. This is in keeping with our tradition on Jubilee occasions of honoring the past by seizing the future – and at the same time, making new plans in an historical context.

A strong commitment to learning has been at the very root of Ismaili and Islamic culture, going back to the first Imam of the Shia Muslims, the fourth Caliph, Hazrat Ali ibn Abi Talib, and his emphasis on knowledge. The tradition was renewed over many centuries in many places by the Abbasids, the Fatimids, the Safavids – the Mughals, the Uzbeks and the Ottomans. During his Imamat, my late Grandfather started some 300 schools in this region. The Academies Programme is thus planted in rich historic soil.

This is a time of exciting dreams and for our Academies programme – as we begin the long process of identifying sites, developing partnerships, and designing campuses. This will be an intricate and demanding process, but we undertake it with a certain confidence. That confidence was re-inforced, I might note, by the excellent scores which our first class of Academy graduates, in Mombasa, have just achieved on their International Baccalaureate exams.

One of the central precepts of the International Baccalaureate Programme is to honour world-class standards, while also respecting cultural diversity. In this respect, its approach mirrors that of the Aga Khan Academies – to help students combine a cosmopolitan spirit on the one hand, with a strong sense of cultural identity on the other.

And is that not one of the secrets to success and fulfillment in our rapidly globalising world? Everyone, everywhere, faces the challenge of engaging – productively and creatively – in the global arena of action and ideas, while also respecting the unique character of family roots and cultural traditions.

As students seek to enter the Academies programme, they will be judged on merit, not by their financial resources. As students leave this programme, they will move on to quality universities – and then to positions of social leadership. We expect many of our Kampala graduates to become pillars of Ugandan public and private institutions, a homegrown cadre of leadership.

Let me also underscore at this point Uganda’s own history as a centre of learning – the home of great international institutions like Makerere University, a traditional source of indigenous African leadership. Today, the Government of Uganda is making a commendable commitment to universal public education. It is a time of renewal in Ugandan education, and we hope the Aga Khan Academy in Kampala will contribute to that process.

Just yesterday, we marked another key step in building Uganda’s future as we laid the foundation stone for a new hydroelectric energy project in Bujagali. I noted there that lasting economic growth will be self-destructive if it is not matched by the growth of the power supply.

The same thing is true in the world of human resources, where people supply the power. If economic growth propels us down a road for which our future leaders are not prepared, then we will never sustain our advances.

This is why so many of the long-term investments we have been making, throughout the developing world, are investments in education. They have ranged from Madrasa programmes for early childhood development, to primary schools in disadvantaged communities, to leadership training programmes and scholarships for promising young professionals. At the tertiary level, we have recently launched the University of Central Asia. This is an international agreement between Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan and the Ismaili Imamat to create a new institution of higher learning specialised in mountain societies. And, as you may know, we are also planning to expand the Aga Khan University – founded almost 25 years ago in Pakistan – and now an active presence in nine different countries. Just this week, the Aga Khan University announced its plans for a new Faculty of Health Sciences in Nairobi, as well as a major new East African campus in Arusha.

All of our initiatives are built around a pragmatic, experience-based, and innovative approach to education – an effort to refresh and replace narrower approaches which have sometimes mis-served the developing world. Education, in the past, has too often been a matter of indoctrination – advancing the demands of dogma instead of the disciplines of reason.

What is required today, in my view, is an educational approach which is the polar opposite of indoctrination – one that nurtures the spirit of anticipation and agility, adaptability and adventure.

To this end, the Academies curriculum will encourage its students in the practice of what I would call “Intellectual Humility, “ recognizing that what they do not know will always be greater than what they know – and launching an ardent, lifelong search for the knowledge they will need. In an age of accelerating change, the most important thing any student can learn is how to go on learning.

Let me touch briefly, on two particular features of the Academy vision. The first is its emphasis on the training of teachers. We plan to create on our campuses a series of Professional Development Centres, devoted to “educating the educators,” and to pedagogical research. On the Kampala campus, in fact, we will begin with teacher education – establishing the Professional Development Centre, even before we enroll the students. We will put the horse before the cart, where it should be. We are confident that good teachers and best practices will radiate out from this Centre into the wider world of education.

A second feature is our emphasis on the value of a residential campus, where students not only learn together but also live together. I have noted a recent study by The World Bank which found that the quantity of time or money spent on education was less important than the quality of specific educational experiences. Extraordinary teachers and exceptional companions are the key to such experiences.

The final point I would emphasize today, above all else, is our uncompromising commitment to Quality– in every aspect of the Academy experience. Our hallmark will be quality students, quality instructors, quality facilities – an unwavering devotion to world-class standards. Let the day be long past when some could excuse mediocrity by saying that it was “good enough for Africa”.

The particular challenge of the Aga Khan Academies will be to provide an exceptional education for exceptional students. We cannot claim that they will directly provide a major proportion of tomorrow’s leaders – or tomorrow’s teachers. But we believe they can help – as centres of energy and influence for the entire educational enterprise.

We look forward to working with the government and the people of Uganda as we pursue these great objectives. I know we will all remember this important ceremony at this beautiful place as a special moment in this process. Again, we are most grateful to all of you for sharing it with us.

Thank you.

Ismailiworld – Be Unite
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Ismailiworld – Be Unite

Aga Khan to Build Uganda’s First Aga Khan Academy

Economic development must be matched by human development

Kampala, Uganda, August 22nd 2007 – His Highness the Aga Khan today said “people power” was vital for economic growth in developing countries. He was speaking at the foundation stone-laying ceremony of the new Aga Khan Academy in Kampala, which joins a network of high-quality schools that will provide world-class education to exceptional students from across the developing world.

The ceremony was attended by His Excellency the Vice President of Uganda, Professor Gilbert Bukenya, as well as other dignitaries, including the Minister of Education and Sports and heads of Uganda’s preeminent universities and secondary schools. The Director General of the International Baccalaureate Organisation, Jeffrey Beard, was also present at the event.

Reflecting on yesterday’s ceremony marking the beginning of construction of Uganda’s new hydroelectric power plant, the Aga Khan said that the potential power of both forms of energy — physical and human – must be harnessed to drive future development. He stressed that investment in physical development has to be accompanied by an effort to educate leaders. “If economic growth propels us down a road for which future leaders are not prepared, then we will never sustain our advances,” he said.

The Aga Khan Academy, Kampala is the third Academy that will be established in the East Africa region and the first in Uganda. The school is located on a 44 acre plot on the shores of Lake Victoria, some 18 km from the centre of Kampala.

The Aga Khan’s emphasis on education is in keeping with the long standing tradition established by his late grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan, who began just a century ago, to build a network of 300 schools in this part of the world.

The Aga Khan Academies education is built on the framework of the internationally recognised International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) programmes. The IB is renowned for preparing students for admission to the best universities in their own countries and abroad. Enhanced by academic, co-curricular and international exchange elements unique to the network of Academies, this educational programme will play an important part in nurturing students who can adapt and thrive in a world of rapid change, as well as make informed judgments on life’s daily challenges.

The leader of the Shia Ismaili Muslims said the Kampala Academy represents an effort to prepare the most talented for future leadership positions. “As students seek to enter the Academies programme, they will be judged on merit, not by their financial resources. As students leave this programme, they will move on to quality universities – and then to positions of social leadership,” he said.

“We expect many of our Kampala graduates to become pillars of Ugandan public and private institutions, a homegrown cadre of leadership,” he added.

The first Aga Khan Academy opened in the Kenyan city of Mombasa in 2003, and produced its first cohort of IB Diploma graduates in June. The overall average of the Mombasa students was nearly two points above the global average for the exams. Two of the 22 students who took the exams scored in the top 3 percent of the 180,000 exam takers globally, and 4 of them were in the top 10 percent.

The Aga Khan Academies are committed to providing the highest quality education and to providing relevant and rewarding professional development programmes for Academy teachers and teachers from government and other schools. A Professional Development Centre (PDC) for teachers will be an integral component of the school and will be established even before students enroll. “We will put the horse before the cart, where it should be, confident that good teachers and best practices will radiate out from this Centre into the wider world of education,” stated the Aga Khan.

The Aga Khan is ending his 12-day visit to East Africa tomorrow. The visit is the first of his Golden Jubilee visits around the world during which he will announce and inaugurate various social development and economic projects. Throughout his East African visit, the Aga Khan has placed emphasis on the importance of establishing health and educational institutions of world-class standards.

Last week, as part of his continued efforts towards excellence in healthcare and education, he announced a US $ 700 million project to build a new Faculty of Health Sciences of the Aga Khan University (AKU), as well a new East African campus in the Tanzanian city of Arusha over the next 15 years. The Arusha campus will serve students from all over the region, becoming the East African Community’s first regional university campus.

For more information please contact:

Craig Bradley
Aga Khan Academies
Craig.Bradley@aiglemont.org

Semin Abdulla
Information Officer
Secretariat of His Highness the Aga Khan
information@aiglemont.org
Tel: + 254 733 530 053

NOTES

The Aga Khan Development Network
His Highness the Aga Khan is founder and Chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), a group of private, non-denominational development agencies working to empower communities and individuals to improve living conditions and opportunities, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, Central and South Asia, and the Middle East. The Network’s nine development agencies focus on social, cultural and economic development for all citizens, regardless of gender, origin or religion. The AKDN’s underlying ethic is compassion for the vulnerable in society. Its annual budget for social development is in excess of US$ 300 million.

Golden Jubilee of His Highness the Aga Khan
His Highness the Aga Khan completed his 50th year as the 49th hereditary Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims on 11th July 2007, succeeding his grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah. The Aga Khan leads a community of 15 million Ismaili Muslims living in some 25 countries around the world and is a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his family). In the Ismaili tradition, the Imam’s Jubilee celebrations offer occasions to launch new social, cultural and economic development projects. In keeping with the ethics of the faith, these projects aspire to improve the quality of life for the most vulnerable in society. During the Jubilee year, the Aga Khan is expected to travel to a number of countries to meet with members of the Ismaili community and visit projects of the AKDN. He is also likely to announce the creation of new development institutions and projects and the significant expansion of existing ones.

Ismailiworld – Be Unite
ismailiworld@gmail.com

Ismailiworld – Be Unite

Aga Khan to Build Uganda’s First Aga Khan Academy

22 August 2007

	His Highness the Aga Khan lays the foundation stone for the Aga Khan Academy, Kampala in the presence of His Excellency Professor Gilbert Bukenya, Vice President of the Republic of Uganda. Looking on is Salim Bhatia, Director of the Academies Unit. File size: 651 KB Photo credit: AKDN/Gary Otte
	His Highness the Aga Khan and His Excellency Professor Gilbert Bukenya, Vice President of the Republic of Uganda, walk towards the reception area to meet dignitaries and high achievers following the foundation stone-laying ceremony of the Aga Khan Academy Kampala. The Academy will be built on a 44 acre plot on the shores of Lake Victoria, some 18 km from the centre of Kampala. File size: 683 KB Photo credit: AKDN/Gary Otte
	His Highness the Aga Khan and His Excellency Vice President Professor Bukenya, meet with Dorcus Inzikuru, Olympic Gold Medallist, at the foundation stone-laying ceremony. File size: 650 KB Photo credit: AKDN/Gary Otte
	His Excellency Professor Gilbert Bukenya, Vice President of the Republic of Uganda, makes a speech on behalf of His Excellency the President, Yoweri Museveni. The President commended the Aga Khan’s commitment to the development of Uganda. File size: 537 KB Photo credit: AKDN/Gary Otte

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The Golden Jubilee Emblem
O mankind ! Be careful of your duty to your Lord Who created you from a single soul and from it created its mate and from them twain hath spread abroad a multiple of men and women

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Celebrate Golden Jubliee with -Peace,Unity,Brotherhood,prayers