Makerere University should be more supportive to the arts disciplines if students are to be instilled with skills for their future careers.

This was one of the talking points this week during Black Panther Phenomenon; rethinking Africa through Fiction and Arts, and of the activities of the Kampala Geopolitics Conference 2018. The event was held yesterday Friday and today, Saturday in the Makerere University Main Hall.

The organizers of the conference aim at creating an interactive and dynamic platform for dialogue and free exchange of ideas across contemporary, local and international geopolitics.

Sammy Wetala, a film and drama student said that Makerere does not appreciate the arts, arguing that this is manifested by the failure to have any theatre for the music, dance and drama students for their practical classes.

"When I want to do something practical, take an example of shooting a simple film, I have to go outside to look for a place to do that however simple it may be, which I could have done here if we had our own theatre," Wetala said.

He explained that as the medicine students have a laboratory for their practical work, arts students also need studios and theatres because both are practical courses. "I have never gone somewhere and a person asks me about my papers, this is a practical subject it is all about what you can do, can you write, can you act?" Wetala added.

According to Nana Kagga, an actress and filmmaker, it is not right to pay science teachers more money compared to the arts teachers or people who did science courses at the expense of those who did arts because they are equally important.

"I personally did engineering but later joined the film industry. Trust me I have found that arts are the most difficult thing I have ever done and we cannot just take the arts people for granted," Kagga said.

Associate Professor Sr. Dominica Dipio, a specialist in film and popular culture, reveals that when students are exposed to the act rather than the theory they cannot be the same. "I had to travel with my film class to Nairobi to have a very good experience with them in shooting their films which I think improved their skills a lot," said Professor Dipio

She explains that she studied film and felt that it was important to share the knowledge with people at Makerere. She thus introduced it at the literature department and calls upon the University to be more supportive of the innovations.

"There should be by now vibrant institutional production to improve the skills of students," Sr. Dipio advised.

Black Panther Phenomenon was one of the topics for discussion during the first day of the two days Kampala Geopolitics conference 2018 which is taking place at Makerere from 26th-27th October this year.

The conference was organised by Alliance Francaise in Kampala (AFK), UN Women, Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS), Embassy of France, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung(KAS) and Makerere University.