Apolo Nsibambi, prime minister of the Republic of Uganda, will speak at Cornell University at noon Monday, July 2, in the Founder's Room of Anabel Taylor Hall. His talk is titled "Ugandan Elections of March 2001: Political and Constitutional Significance." It is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception.

Nsibambi was education minister of Uganda from May 1998 until April 1999, when he was named prime minister by President Yoweri Museveni, in a cabinet reshuffle. Museveni, a former guerrilla leader, was elected president of Uganda in 1996 but has been in power since 1986 in the East African country, which borders on Kenya and Rwanda. As president he launched a sweeping privatization program that has been hailed by international lenders as an economic success story but criticized for fostering corrupt practices. Nsibambi's appointment was intended to help rout out corruption.

Nsibambi earned an M.A. in political science from the University of Chicago in 1966 and a Ph.D. at Nairobi University in 1984. He was minister of public service from 1996 to 1998. Before that he had a distinguished career in higher education, becoming dean of the faculty of social sciences at Makerere University and director of its Institute of Social Research in 1993.

Nsibambi was one of the few educators and intellectual leaders who chose to remain in Uganda and struggled to keep higher education alive as his country endured two decades of civil war and chaos in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a delegate to the Uganda Constituent Assembly in 1994 and helped create a new constitution that year.

Nsibambi's visit is sponsored by Cornell's Institute for African Development and other campus groups. He last spoke at Cornell in September of 1999.