Hopeful

If all goes well the construction of the Centre for African and Brazilian Studies at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies could recommence as early as next year.

Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice Chancellor of The University of the West Indies said yesterday that the Centre, once completed, would be home to the Institute for Global African Affairs, a joint initiative of the UWI and the University of Johannesburg in South Africa.

His comments came yesterday at the official launch of the Cave Hill arm of the Institute in the campus’ main conference room, where he noted that construction on the Centre was stopped just six months after it started a few years ago.

“Three years ago we started the construction of a very architecturally exciting building that was approved as the Centre for African and Brazilian studies and that building was 30 percent up and developing; and we were all excited to see this building and this building was intended to host this Institute. But then this campus as you know had massive budget cuts and in massive budget cuts we had to halt the construction of that building. But we are hoping that in the next year when the financial situation eases, and we do expect it to ease in the coming year, that we would return to the completion of that building,” he stated.

Sir Hilary indicated that the building, designed to resemble a slave ship, was estimated to cost in the region of US $4million and they are hopeful that when resources are made available to the Campus in the next financial year, that it can be finished. The Vice Chancellor is so committed to seeing this project come to fruition, that he insisted that even if the Campus does not get the financial support from the “traditional sources of revenue”, that he intends to “aggressively” pursue avenues in the global financial system to find the necessary resources to complete the building.

“It was meant to be the flagship for this Institute as well as to foster relations with Brazil and other parts of Global Africa and it was designed architecturally in order to make our message clear – global Africa on the move again,” he stated.

In the meantime, Pro Vice Chancellor at The UWI, Professor Alan Cobley indicated that the Institute will be located in the CARICOM Research Building and a sign to that effect should be mounted on the building during the course of this week. Similarly, he explained that at the University of Johannesburg, the Institute will be located in the building that currently accommodates the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation.

“We are very much focused on sustainability for this project, which means that we need to generate revenue before we start spending a lot of revenue or outlaying cash… So we are taking a lean and mean approach in the first phase,” he stated. (JRT)