Makerere University College of Business

The College of Business and Management Sciences (COBAMS) is one of the 8 Colleges of Makerere University, it was formed as a merger between the Faculty of Economics and Management (FEMA) and the Institute of Statistics and Applied Economics (ISAE). The merger followed the University Council’s recommendation of 2008 that required all Faculties and Institutes to explore and implement college formation, as part of the strategies to improve efficiency and effectiveness of the overall organisation and management of Makerere University.

Faculty of Economics and Management (FEMA)

The Faculty of Economics and Management (FEMA) grew out of the Makerere University Institute of Economics (MUIE) which evolved out of the Department of Economics, formerly in the Faculty of Social Sciences until the academic year 1999/2000. MUIE was elevated to a faculty status in October 2004. The faculty was mandated to teach Economics, Business and Management courses in Makerere University as well as carrying out research

The Faculty of Economics and Management was comprised of five departments:

• Department of Economic Theory and Analysis,
• Department of Development Economics,
• Department of Economic Policy and Planning,
• Department of Finance and Accounting and,
• Department of Marketing and Management.

Institute of Statistics and Applied Economics (ISAE)

The Institute of Statistics and Applied Economics was, established in July 1969 as an autonomous Institute, within the legal framework of Makerere University.  It was to provide facilities for high level professional training for personnel in Statistics and Applied Economics so as to meet the urgent needs of Uganda and other East African countries, as well as other English-speaking African countries.

The professional Statistics programme is unique in that it takes advantages of the synergies existing between Mathematics, required for modeling, Economics for theories and Statistics for data collection, processing, analysis and dissemination.

The ISAE grew both in scope and depth of its programmes and services since it was founded four decades ago. In order to consolidate its past successes in training statisticians at professional level and to adequately develop the post-graduate and specialized programmes, the University Council approved three departments for the ISAE, namely:

• Department of Statistical Methods
• Department of Planning and Applied Statistics
• Department of Population Studies

Rationale for the Merger

The rationale for the merger between FEMA and ISAE was mainly demonstrated in the commonalities and inter-linkages shared across their study disciplines and academic offerings. For a long time FEMA has been facilitating a good number of course units in the ISAE programmes of Bachelor of Statistics, BSC Quantitative Economics and Bachelor of Science in Business Statistics. Likewise, FEMA has a number of Quantitative and Statistical based courses in her programmes, where ISAE has good competence. FEMA and ISAE share critical elements in their vision and mission focus. The individual disciplinary areas of Economics, Statistics and Population Studies, for example, essentially serve the development policy arena, and greatly support the efficient and effective functionality of Business and Management of organizations, across the spectrum of public, private and non-governmental/civil society sectors.