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03 April 2019 | Story Xolisa Mnukwa | Photo Vhugala Nthakheni
Uhuru Qwaqwa Arrival
The #UFSWalkToUhuru team arrives at the UFS Qwaqwa Campus on Friday 22 March.

The University of the Free State (UFS) Division of Student Affairs, in collaboration with the UFS Office for International Affairs, have joined hands to drive a fundraising and student-accessibility initiative dubbed, ‘The Walk to Uhuru’ (#UFSWalktoUhuru), which is aimed at raising funds and advocating for the educational rights of the less privileged. 

The project aims to raise funds in excess of R2 million from the public and stakeholders affiliated with the UFS (Kovsie staff and students). The project derives from the 2018/2019 UFS Institutional Student Representative Council (ISRC) mandate ‘Students Must Graduate’. The ISRC mandate aims to source funding opportunities for UFS students to register, and to complete their studies across all three campuses in 2020 and beyond.

The first leg of the project, a 350 km walk from the Bloemfontein to the Qwaqwa Campus, has already taken place and concluded on Friday, 22 March 2019 as planned. The #UFSWalkToUhuru team successfully completed the first leg of their journey to academic freedom for financially disadvantaged students at the UFS. The Uhuru team is now focusing its attention on the second leg and is determined to take on Mount Kilimanjaro (Uhuru) from 20 June to 20 July 2019.

The team sat down for a debriefing session to unpack the overall experience and result of the first half of the initiative, and they all agreed that the walk to Qwaqwa was an enlightening experience. It was a walk that comprised learning opportunities, team building, and goal crushing.

According to Rethabile Motseki, member of the #UFSWalkToUhuru team, the walk to Qwaqwa made a significant impact on the project, as the university community is now aware of the significant goals that the team is trying to accomplish. The team has also resumed their fitness-training programme to ensure that they are ready to take on the Uhuru climb in June.

A media briefing will take place shortly (date to be confirmed) to detail the ongoing fundraising initiatives rolled out by the #UFSWalkToUhuru team.  We implore you, and the nation as a whole, to help establish a better future for disadvantaged UFS students by donating to the initiative.

Students, staff, and the public can support the cause and make contributions/donations to the initiative by visiting the UFS Walk to Uhuru #givengain account page.

For more information, contact UFS SRC President, Sonwabile Dwaba, on DwabaSJ@ufs.ac.za  or Rethabile Motseki on MotsekiR@ufs.ac.za  

News Archive

PSP produces first Y1-rating in UFS Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences
2015-12-14

Dr Andrew Cohen, a research fellow at the University of the Free State, recently received a distinguished National Research Foundation Y1-rating.
Photo: Sonia Small

The latest success story of the Vice-Chancellor’s Prestige Scholars Programme (PSP) is that the first National Research Foundation (NRF) Y1-rating was awarded recently to a scholar while teaching in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at the University of the Free State (UFS).

Dr Andrew Cohen received this distinguished rating on 10 November 2015. It is awarded to a “young” (younger than 40) scholar five years or less post-PhD, whose curriculum vitae predicts, according to a panel of international and local reviewers, that he is poised to become a leader in his field. Dr Cohen is a research fellow at the UFS.

This rating is a reflection of Dr Cohen’s record over the past eight years, and the scholarly environment he was part of at the UFS under leadership of Prof Ian Phimister. Cohen is currently a research fellow in Prof Phimister’s International Studies Group.  He taught economic history in the Department of Economics until September 2015, when he joined the School of History at the University of Kent.

Dr Cohen’s professional trajectory is emblematic of the visionary approach of the UFS Prestige Scholars Programme (PSP): to support prestige scholars with advanced mentorship, and the creation of a college of peers in order to nurture intellectual breadth and depth to generate knowledge over disciplines.

The PSP was initiated by Prof Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the UFS in 2011.

“Jonathan Jansen’s prestige scholars have become sought after in the academic community at large, as this recent appointment at the University of Kent indicates,” says Professor Neil Roos, co-director of the PSP. “Yet the alumni’s commitment to the programme, the university and their peers continues.”

Cohen is the editor (with Casper Andersen) of the five volume, The Government and Administration of Africa, 1880-1939. Dr Cohen’s next project is forthcoming from I.B. Tauris, The Politics and Economics of Decolonisation: The Failed Experiment of the Central African Federation.

 

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