UniMak is a private Catholic university in Sierra Leone. It was fully accredited by the Tertiary Education Commission in 2009. The Catholic Diocese of Makeni is the proprietor, and the Chancellor is Bishop Natale Paganelli.

UniMak has made great efforts to develop academic programmes that are rooted in the everyday reality of contemporary Africa. Currently, there are seven faculties: Agriculture and Food Sciences; Commerce and Management; Education; Social Sciences and Law; Mass Communication and Computer Science; Philosophy and Humanities and Religious Studies. Presently there are 17 Departments and seven Directorates with over 3500 students and 122 teaching staff.

Nurturing job creators (not job seekers) who are responsible citizens in a democratic society, has always been a UniMak goal. Nevertheless, UniMak recognises that employability is an important tertiary education outcome since not everybody can succeed as an entrepreneur. UniMak’s stance resonates with the African Union’s ‘Continental Education Strategy for Africa’ which highlights the need for education that meets ‘the knowledge, competencies, skills, innovation and creativity required to nurture African core values and promote sustainable development at the national, sub-regional and continental levels’ (African Union, 2016:21).

Raising engaged citizens who can contribute to sustainable development in diverse ways, requires academic innovation by designing and revising programmes that keep abreast of global and national trends. UniMak’s first postgraduate programme, a Masters (MA) in Sustainable Development (launched in 2010) was to address the problems of sustainable development in Sierra Leone at the time when the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were ongoing.

Reflecting the goal of nurturing job creators, UniMak’s second postgraduate programme, the Global MBA in Impact Entrepreneurship (initially run in partnership with the ALTIS Postgraduate School of Business and Society, the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy) trains entrepreneurs.

This Global MBA in Impact Entrepreneurship is built around participants’ business ideas; to which they apply the knowledge and tools they learn during the programme to successfully launch a new and impactful business venture.