News Releases

The UWI St. Augustine Mourns the Passing of Anthony N. Sabga

For Release Upon Receipt - May 4, 2017

UWI


The UWI St. Augustine joins the national and regional community in mourning the passing of Honorary Graduate Anthony N. Sabga, ORTT Chairman Emeritus of the ANSA McAL Group. He passed away at the age of 94. In 1998, Sabga was conferred the honorary Doctor of Laws honoris causa, for his contribution to the entrepreneurial landscape of Trinidad and Tobago. In the citation read at that ceremony by then public orator Professor Emeritus Kenneth Ramchand, Sabga was hailed as “master entrepreneur”  who could not be acknowledged without recognising "the struggles to belong of the man, and the entrepreneurial contribution to economy and society of the community he comes out of.”  He was a man who defied easy generalisations about what it means to be a successful, according to the late Michael Mansoor, former Campus Council chair, “All of us who know him, know that the concomitant of the lion’s bravery is his roar – a roar which can send shivers down the spines of some, though it may be a clarion call to excellence for others.”

Anthony N. Sabga and by extension the ANSA McAL group have had strong ties to The UWI dating back to 1989 when ANSA McAL funded a building that housed the ANSA McAL Psychological Research Centre. The desire to pay back the country for all the blessings bestowed to ANSA McAL was also seen as a motivating factor for the company’s involvement with The UWI.  In 2005, Sabga launched the far-reaching philanthropic initiative – the Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence. It is the only privately funded enterprise in the region that recognises and provides significant awards in the areas of Arts & Letters, Science & Technology, Public & Civic Contributions and Entrepreneurship. In 2014, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the St. Augustine Campus and ANSA McAL. The event signalled a deepening of the relationship between ANSA McAL and The UWI with the launch of the Guardian Media School of Journalism, the Anthony N. Sabga School of Entrepreneurship and the reopening of the ANSA McAL Psychological Research Centre.

In reflecting on his life and contributions, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Campus Principal Professor Brian Copeland remarked: “Sabga is best known for his acumen for cultivating business opportunities, but his legacy of generosity towards The UWI and the country as a whole will never be forgotten.”

About The UWI

Since its inception in 1948, The University of the West Indies (UWI) has evolved from a fledgling college in Jamaica with 33 students to a full-fledged, regional University with well over 40,000 students. Today, UWI is the largest, most longstanding higher education provider in the Commonwealth Caribbean, with four campuses in Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Open Campus. The UWI has faculty and students from more than 40 countries and collaborative links with 160 universities globally; it offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Food & Agriculture, Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Science and Technology and Social Sciences. UWI’s seven priority focal areas are linked closely to the priorities identified by CARICOM and take into account such over-arching areas of concern to the region as environmental issues, health and wellness, gender equity and the critical importance of innovation. Website: www.uwi.edu

(Please note that the proper name of the university is The University of the West Indies, inclusive of the “The”, hence The UWI.)

 

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