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01 January 2018

After South Africa’s battle with the record-breaking drought of 2015, Prof Andries Jordaan from our Disaster Management Training and Education Centre for Africa(DiMTEC) saw room for improvement in dealing with this kind of disaster. 

Drought impact

Commercial farmers   who are usually net exporters of food crops   and communal farmers who own the bulk of the country’s livestock, were all hit hard in 2015. Most of the latter had no resources to spare as the drought progressed. The concern about the drought’s impact on the country’s food production and availability resulted in a joint goal of preventing food scarcity during future droughts.

Prof Jordaan’s visit to the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) in Lincoln, Nebraska, in the US, several years ago prepared him to better equip communities in South Africa to deal with drought situations. “I recognised that in spite of the impact DiMTEC has been able to make on disaster preparedness, a gap remained in disaster response in South Africa.”

Sharing knowledge

In August this year Prof Jordaan again visited the NDMC. This time he requested a few key players in South Africa’s agriculture and disaster response communities to join him. With him were Janse Rabie, head of Natural Resources at AgriSA, a nonprofit organisation that functions as an interface between the government and about 28 000 South Africa farmers, and Moses Musiwale Khangale, director of Fire Services for the South African Ministry of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs.

The South African delegation met with and learnt from climatologists, geospatial technologists, and outreach and planning analysts. 

News Archive

SA-YSSP strengthens academic partnerships between countries
2014-11-17

 

Deputy Minister of Science and Technology, Zanele Magwaza-Msibi
Photo: Stephen Collett

Students from all over the world and all walks of life have come together at the Bloemfontein Campus to take part in the Southern African Young Scientists Summer Programme (SA-YSSP) hosted by our university.

This prestigious academic programme is an annual three-month education, academic training and research capacity development programme. The programme is presented in collaboration with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) as well as the National Research Foundation.

Dr Priscilla Mensah, Director of the SA-YSSP, says this programme’s Doctoral candidates are given the opportunity to advance their research under the direct supervision of senior scientists from South Africa and IIASA.

“In line with international trends in doctoral education, the SA-YSSP seeks to advance not only the discipline-specific research skills of the young scientists, but also equip and expose scholars to an array of additional competencies and skills required to be successful in knowledge-driven societies,” Dr Mensah says.

During her keynote address, Deputy Minister of Science and Technology, Zanele Magwaza-Msibi, praised the UFS for hosting this successful programme for the third year. “The success of this programme shows in the increase in applicants internationally but specifically in our SADEC regions.”

She said that solutions to the problems in the world require a wide variety of knowledge and integrated approaches to the unique challenges in different countries.

Deputy Minister Magwaza-Msibi also regards the SA-YSSP as a very successful platform to strengthen partnerships with countries.

 

 

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