Kyambogo University Debating team emerged second among African English speaking countries at the 2019 version of the World University Debating Championships (WUDC) held at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.
The tournament that ran from 27th December, 2018 to 4thJanuary, 2019 gathered great minds from Tertiary institutions around the globe. Universities and their debating unions sent teams of speakers and adjudicators to battle in the British Parliamentary style against one another.
The University of Cape Town, an internationally accredited institution for academics, research and debating and undoubtedly the best University in Africa ranked at varying degrees of excellence on the world stage was the host of the tournament. The University welcomed over 400 debating teams from around the world who battled it out in 9 preliminary rounds. After the preliminaries, the teams did Knock Out rounds where teams that could not advance were kicked out of the competition.
Knock Out rounds were in three categories. These included, The Open Category, The English as Foreign Language (EFL) category and the English as Second Language (ESL) category.
Kyambogo University, which participated in the EFL category,garnered 10 points hence ranking second best in Africa, and the best African University outside South Africa behind the University of Johannesburg. There was no East African Debating Team that did even half that good.
Speaking to one of the members that constituted Kyambogo’s debating team, he revealed that the team actually missed some rounds.
“It is important to note that we missed one round and did 8 rounds instead of 9. This means that we missed 3 points and 160 speaker points that we could add to our final tally. We would stand a chance to grab all these had we won that particular round,” said Shabil Ojambo.
The African teams that Kyambogo University competed against include South Africa, Kenya, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Ghana and Botswana.
