JULY 11, 1991

MAWLANA HAZAR IMAM ON EAST AFRICAN VISIT

International Team accompanies Hazar Imam to study possible AKU collaboration


Mowlana Hazar Imam visited Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zanzibar for two weeks in July 1991, during which he met with President Daniel Arap Moi of Kenya, President Hassan Ali Mwinyi of Tanzania, President Salim Amour Juma of Zanzibar and President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda.

As Chancellor of the Aga Khan University, Mowlana Hazar Imam was accompanied to Kenya and Tanzania by the Board of Trustees of the Aga Khan University, a group of prominent international academics, medical practitioners and professionals. The Board visited institutions of the Aga Khan Health and Education Services, as well as other similar government and private institutions in both Kenya and Tanzania, with a view to examining areas of possible collaboration between the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Aga Khan University and the Aga Khan Health and Education institutions in both countries. President Daniel Arap Moi hosted a banquet at State House, Nairobi, in honour of Hazar Imam and the Board of Trustees. Hazar Imam hosted a reciprocal banquet in his honour the next day.

The eleven members of the University's Board of Trustees who accompanied Hazar Imam were: Sahabzada Yaqub Khan, Chairman of the Board and Pakistan's Foreign Minister from 1981 to earlier this year; Professor David Bell, Professor Emeritus of Population Services and International Health at the Harvard School of Public Health; Dr. Nabil Kronfol, Deputy Vice-President for Health and Project Director of the College of Health Sciences in the United Arab Emirates of the American University of Beirut; Dr. Robert Buchanan, General Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston; Mr. Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid, a judge of the Sindh High Court; Mr. Guillaume de Spoelberch, Executive Director of the Aga Khan Foundation; Dr. Fraser Mustard, Vice-President of Health Sciences at the University of Toronto; Dr. Abdul Qadir Ansari, Chairman of the University Grants Commission in Pakistan; Mr. Shamsh Kassim-Lakha, Chairman of the Board of the Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi; Dr. John Bartlett, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Aga Khan University, Karachi; and Mr. Aziz Currimbhoy, Chairman of the Aga Khan Health Service, Pakistan.

The Board visited various projects and programmes run by the Aga Khan Health Services and the Aga Khan Education Services in Kenya and Tanzania, where they heard presentations on primary health care and early childhood education. In Mombasa, Dar-es-Salaam and Zanzibar, they visited madrassahs and got a first hand impression of the early childhood programme funded by the Aga Khan Foundation and implemented by the Aga Khan Education Services. The programmes have an outreach to a number of Muslim schools.

In Kisumu and Mombasa, the Board went on field trips to primary health care projects, where Mowlana Hazar Imam and the Board received a tumultuous welcome. Thousands of inhabitants - participants in and beneficiaries of the projects established by Hazar Imam - came to the meetings to express their gratitude for the enormous work done for their upliftment.

In Dar-es-Salaam, on Friday 12th July 1991, Mowlana Hazar Imam and President Ali Mwinyi signed an Accord of Cooperation for Development, followed by a luncheon at State House in Hazar Imam's honour hosted by the Tanzanian President. On the same day, Prince Amyn Mohamed who had accompanied Hazar Imam for part of the visit, signed a Protocol of Cooperation between the Aga Khan Development Network and the Government of Tanzania represented by the Minister of Finance, the Honourable Steven Kibona.

The Accord stated Tanzania's recognition of the Aga Khan Development Network's long contribution to the development of Tanzania." The Government agreed to promote "an enabling status to facilitate more effective functioning and optimum utilisation of human and financial resources of the Development Network, in an effort to accelerate the economic, social and cultural development of Tanzania."

Hazar Imam at the same time announced the formal establishment of a Tanzanian unit of the Aga Khan Foundation, underlining a significant increase in the Foundation's commitment to East Africa. In welcoming the agreements reached with the Tanzanian Government, Hazar Imam paid particular tribute to the Government's initiatives to enhance the environment for development, contributing to a strengthened sense of confidence in the country's future.

The Tanzanian Government has agreed to provide to the non-profit charitable institutions of the Aga Khan Development Network - the new Tanzanian unit of the Aga Khan Foundation and the Aga Khan Health and Education Services - certain privileges that are accorded to similar non-governmental and international institutions contributing to the development of the country.

The Aga Khan Foundation, the Imamat's principal agency for social development in the Third World, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland and branches and affiliates in Europe, North America, Africa and Asia, is already supporting school improvement and early childhood education programmes in Dar-es-Salaam and Zanzibar. With the incorporation of the Tanzanian unit, the Foundation's activities in the country will be expanded.

Following these field visits and a meeting with the Board of Trustees in Kenya on 14th July, Mowlana Hazar Imam visited Kampala at the invitation of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. Accompanied by senior representatives of the Aga Khan Development Network, Hazar Imam met with President Yoweri Museveni, the Prime Minister and Government Ministers.

Discussions revolved around the implementation of the Protocol of Agreement relating to the restitution and reutilization of the Imamat's properties in Uganda. The Protocol was signed in Kampala by President Museveni and Hazar Imam in July 1989. Discussions also covered possible development initiatives to be undertaken by the Aga Khan Development Network.

The 1989 Protocol of Agreement has been implemented with certain properties - including religious buildings, schools and commercial properties - being returned in recent months.

These institutional properties were taken over, in 1972, under the expropriation decisions of the Idi Amin regime and the 1989 Protocol recognizes that this step was illegal and that the properties remained vested in the Ismaili Imamat/

Following Uganda, Hazar Imam visited Zanzibar as a guest of President Salim Amour Juma where he visited an early childhood education project sponsored by the Aga Khan Foundation and the Stonetown to review progress on restoration being undertaken jointly by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development.

This visit to East Africa was especially joyous for members of the Jamat for Mowlana Hazar Imam was present with them on Imamat Day.

Thousands of members of the Jamat assembled at the Parkland's Complex in Nairobi and the Diamond Jubilee Complex in Dar-es-Salaam respectively on 11th July to have Didar of Mowlana Hazar Imam.

Hazar Imam spoke about the progress that the institutions had made for the well being of the Jamat and the people among whom they lived. He emphasized the role that these institutions were playing both nationally and internationally, and the recognition that they had received from international development aid agencies. Exhorting the Jamat to work with wisdom and integrity, Hazar Imam spoke about how our institutions had benefited from the voluntary service that members of the Jamat were rendering. Hazar Imam also spoke of the role of the Aga Khan University and the new endowment programme of the Aga Khan Foundation in Kenya and how it will enhance the AKF's capability to fulfill its mandate. He mentioned how the Board of Trustees were impressed by what they saw in the field of development - particularly the work done by the Aga Khan network of institutions in East Africa.

Mowlana Hazar Imam left for Europe from Nairobi on 19th July, 1991.

Source: Ismaili U.S.A. (July 11, 1991)


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