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02 July 2019 | Story Valentino Ndaba | Photo Charl Devenish
Dr Ufok Samson-Akpan
A family built on education and entrepreneurship: From left; Dr Ufok Samson-Akpan, Dr Ekaete Benedict, Aniebo Hagan, and Mmedaara Samson-Akpan.
Graduating from the University of the Free State (UFS) is a family affair for the Samson-Akpans. Over a period of 16 years the family have garnered a total of nine qualifications from the UFS. The mother and her five children have among them an undergraduate degree, two honours degrees, two master’s degrees, and two postgraduate diplomas. During the June graduations, they added another master’s degree and a PhD degree to their haul. 

Dr Ufok Samson-Akpan, a specialist family physician and the coordinator of the Nelson Mandela Fidel Castro Student Training Programme, was the first to register at the UFS. She graduated with an MBA degree in Management and Health Care Management   the same day as her first daughter Ekaete Benedict who graduated with a BCom Hons degree in Business Management in 2003. Sixteen years later, on 28 June 2019, the family celebrated another double graduation. Benedict obtained her PhD in Business Management alongside her sister Aniebo Hagan who graduated with her Master’s in Disaster Management.

Empowerment through education

Benedict is walking in her father’s footsteps as a lecturer at the Department of Business Management. “We hail from an academically inclined family. Our late father was a lecturer in English and Theatre Arts. Our house was always filled with books and we were encouraged to read, to be creative and inquisitive about our surroundings,” Benedict explains.

Her belief in education and women empowerment led her to establish a NPO called Cherished Rubies. “It focuses on projects and activities related to the empowerment, development, training and health of the girl child and women in the province,” she elaborates. 

Merging education and entrepreneurship

Her PhD thesis titled: The Influence of Environmental and Individual Factors on the Growth Intentions of SMMEs in the Free State investigates internal and external forces that could facilitate or hinder entrepreneurs’ intentions to grow their businesses. “The results and recommendations should benefit current entrepreneurs, policymakers, educational institutions and relevant government agencies seeking to decrease the failure rate of Small Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) in the province,” she said.
 
Benedict is also the CEO and co-founder of Mdy Designs (Pty) Ltd, which she operates with another sister, Mmedaara Samson-Akpan who graduated from the UFS with a B.Sc in Information Technology and Management in 2015. Mdy Designs is an award-winning business in Bloemfontein which focuses on clothing and accessories inspired by indigenous African designs and materials.

Descending from a lineage of women who used education to empower themselves, Benedict is a true inspiration for women in education and entrepreneurship and takes the baton to empower future generations. 

News Archive

UFS researchers are producing various flavour and fragrance compounds
2015-05-27

 

The minty-fresh smell after brushing your teeth, the buttery flavour on your popcorn and your vanilla-scented candles - these are mostly flavour and fragrance compounds produced synthetically in a laboratory and the result of many decades of research.

This research, in the end, is what will be important to reproduce these fragrances synthetically for use in the food and cosmetic industries.

Prof Martie Smit, Academic Head of the Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology at the UFS, and her colleague Dr Dirk Opperman, currently have a team of postgraduate students working on the production of various flavour and fragrance compounds from cheap and abundantly available natural raw materials. 

Prof Smit explains that most of the flavours and fragrances that we smell every day, originally come from natural compounds produced mainly by plants.

“However, because these compounds are often produced in very low concentrations by plants, many of these compounds are today replaced with synthetically-manufactured versions. In recent times, there is an increasing negative view among consumers of such synthetic flavour and fragrance compounds.”

On the other hand, aroma chemicals produced by biotechnological methods, are defined as natural according to European Union and Food and Drug Administration (USA) legal definitions, provided that the raw materials used are of natural origin.  Additionally, the environmental impact and carbon footprint associated with biotech-produced aroma chemicals are often also smaller than those associated with synthetically-produced compounds or those extracted by traditional methods from agricultural sources.

During the last four years, the team investigated processes for rose fragrance, vanilla flavour, mint and spearmint flavours, as well as butter flavour. They are greatly encouraged by the fact that one of these processes is currently being commercialised by a small South African natural aroma chemicals company. Their research is funded by the Department of Science and Technology and the National Research Foundation through the South African Biocatalysis Initiative, the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Catalysis and the Technology Innovation Agency, while the UFS has also made a significant investment in this research.

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