KAMPALA — President Museveni has appointed former Chief Justice Bart Katureebe,as the Chancellor of Uganda Management Institute (UMI).
UMI is a government-owned national center for training, research, and consultancy in the field of management and administration in Uganda.
It is one of the country’s public universities and degree-awarding institutions in the country outside the military.
Katureebe who has been given 4 year stint replaces former Education Minister Namirembe Butamazire.
In exercise of the powers conferred upon the President by Section 30(1) of the Universities and Other Tertiary Institutions Act as amended, the Instrument of Appointment issued and signed by President on June 6, 2021,
reads as follows:
“In exercise of the powers conferred upon me by Section 30(1) of the Universities and Other Tertiary Institutions Act 2001, as amended, I Yoweri Tibuhaburwa Kaguta Museveni do hereby appoint Bart M Katureebe Chancellor of Uganda Management Institute for a period of four years with effect from the date of assumption of duty.”
Justice Katureebe in 2020 retired on reaching 70, the mandatory age for judges to quit in Uganda.
The former Chief Justice had a wide-ranging career before becoming a member of Uganda’s Supreme Court, and his legacy includes introducing an electronic case management system for the country.
Katureebe had a career of astonishingly wide and varied experience.
He served in government’s executive arm as minister and deputy minister, holding a variety of portfolios including that of Minister of Justice.
He was also an ‘ordinary’ member of parliament, and in that capacity was part of the assembly that drew up Uganda’s 1995 constitution.
In private practice he helped head up one of the most prominent law firms in Kampala and served on the boards of a number of major companies.
Then he went back to government, this time as a member of the judicial branch, first as a judge of the Supreme Court and then as Chief Justice.
His appointment as Chief Justice ended a two-year hiatus during which Uganda had no official judicial leader.
Among the many international bodies with which he was associated, he was a founding member of the Standing International Forum of Commercial Courts. In the tribute paid to him by that organisation, SIFoCC said he had always championed collaboration between judiciaries, the importance of training and case management and the sharing of best practice between courts.
Despite his strong commitment to electronic case management as a way of dealing with the serious backlog of cases in the Ugandan courts, there has not yet been the kind of significant results that he would have wished as part of his legacy.