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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

UFS Autumn Graduation inspires perseverance
2015-04-20

 

Louzanne Coetzee and her guide dog, Oakley after she received her degree at the UFS’s Autumn Graduation.
Photo: Gerhardus Bosch

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Prof Himla Soodyall
Mr Ndumiso Hadebe
Leanne Manas
Dr Maria Phalime
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Autumn has seen the UFS’s first graduation ceremonies of the year on the Bloemfontein Campus. From 14 to 17 April 2015, a total of 3 660 graduates were rewarded for their hard work while top speakers addressed them in the Callie Human Centre.

UFS Chancellor, Dr Khotso Mokhele, commented the more than 250 students who passed their degrees with distinctions at the autumn graduation.

Prof Soodyall, a Medical Scientist at the South African Institute for Medical Research as well as  Principal Medical Scientist for the National Health Laboratory Service, and Director for the Human Genome Diversity and Disease Research Unit at the University of Witwatersrand delivered the first motivational message of the April Graduation. The group of graduates in the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences listened as she shared her story with them.
 
"My own career – with no grand design or script – steered me into conducting genetic research on human populations from sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on a better understanding of human evolution, and to reconstruct the prehistory of African populations. While giving graduates a glimpse on how her career progressed, Prof Soodyall said: "I share these stories with you to give you some reassurance that you do not need feel that you have to figure out every minute detail of where to from here. Things fall into place with hard work, dedication, and dreams.

The developed world is forging ahead with interventions, so the gap between the developed world and the developing world continues to grow bigger. Prof Soodyall said: “You have the unenviable opportunity to think strategically, and to use the modern tools in your respective fields to make significant advances to transform our society, and to contribute to making it a better place for all. We need to embrace the current challenges, and build networks and bridges across disciplines to close the gaps, to work beyond the cultural barriers, and to ensure equity in access to health, water, education, etc, for all, as we would wish these things for ourselves and our families.

Read the full story of the Autumn Graduation 2015

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