Monday, 25.2. – Juggling loose ends

Busy day: Early Breakfast and pick-up by Boda-John at 8:30AM to the University. The distance is about 4km and by halfway, I am completely covered by the red-brown dust that is produced by the vehicles in front of us and coming from uphill.

Ronald, one the 3^rd year students brings me into the classroom where I am supposed to hold my lecture on Supply Chain Finance. 



On my way to the lecture


The session gets quite extensive, but we manage to work along the agenda I defined for myself and by 11:45 we are done. The students participated quite well by asking questions and I have the impression that the session in general was well received.

Over lunch in the staff canteen (local dish: Matoke and peas with peanut sauce), Oliver, Geoffrey, Felix and myself discuss next steps on the Bank Cooperation Initiative. By the way, the travel ban regarding the Kenyan elections is limited to Kenya, so we will luckily not face any logistical issues regarding the transport of staff and students to Kampala. For the event itself, we agree on Thursday, 14^th March. While GIZ will take care of the logistics (booking of venue, transportation of students), I will now work on the project documentation and start touchbasing with the banks in order to get their buy-in for a participation. Over the next days, Geoffrey will identify a core-team of 5-6 students from 1^st and 2^nd year who will be asked to take forward the project once we leave.

For 4th March, a department day for the staff and students from the Banking department and the Business department is planned. On that occasion, I will hold another lecture on Product Management and Organisation, and Felix will give an overview on potential career options in Banking and the expectations that are set by banks towards graduates joining banks. If time allows, we will complement this session with an overview on social networking and how it can be leveraged for the benefit of students.

In the following department staff meeting we brainstorm ideas, including co-operations with other universities, follow-up activities with local banks after the kick-off workshop in March, more lectures we could potentially teach while we are here and further items – all in all, a multitude of loose ends we will now have to manage and box.  While juggling with all these ideas, we will try to ensure that they do not get lost on the way, however first we want to focus on the projects we are originally here for.

No need to mention where we went for dinner. There are still some white spots on the menu, so we are positive we will have covered everything by the time we leave...!