Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Previous Archive
05 November 2020 | Story Thabo Kessah | Photo Thabo Kessah
Prof Geofrey Mukwada says funding from the US Embassy and Consulates in South Africa will reinforce the ARU mandate.

The University of the Free State (UFS) will further strengthen its ties with the Appalachian State University in the next two academic years through a mountain-to-mountain research project funded by the US Embassy and Consulates in South Africa.

The R8 million project between the UFS and the US institution will cover the two master’s degree programmes in underdeveloped niche areas, meteorological weather stations, leadership capacity building for black women in academia, and doctoral research projects. Qwaqwa Campus departments that will be involved are Physics, Geography, Community Development, and the ARU.

Talking about this collaboration, the project leader, Prof Geofrey Mukwada, said it would bring together researchers from both the UFS and Appalachian State University and enable them to work together to develop what is currently an underdeveloped research niche, i.e. mountain studies. 

“This project will reinforce the mandate of the Afromontane Research Unit (ARU). It will provide the basis for a long-term development agenda through training and infrastructure development. For instance, the project will fund the implementation of two master’s degree programmes – the MSc in Mountain Environments and the MA in Community Development – which are long-term projects,” he said. 

“It will also support innovation in climate change research. Through this project, it will be possible to receive climate data from weather stations that are situated in distant, isolated, and generally inaccessible locations without travelling to those locations. We will be able to understand how the climate of the region is changing and assist in developing adaptation measures and decisions that are applicable to agriculture, water, tourism, environment, and other sectors. This will enhance the capacity of the ARU to contribute to the development of research in mountain environments,” he added. 

There will be a virtual launch of the project on Tuesday 10 November 2020 at 15:00 (CAT).

News Archive

UFS Partner in Major DfID African Project
2012-09-26

This three-year initiative focuses on promoting and creating awareness of research uptake through the use of benchmarking between universities in similar regions. The multimillion Rand partnership is funded by the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DfID).

The project is headed by a partnership between the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST) at Stellenbosch University, and Organisation Systems Design (OSD), a South African-based consultancy specialising in research management and capacity building sectors in Africa.

DRUSSA aims to build a socially interactive community of organisations who focus their research efforts on impacting policy and practice in their countries and to promote the dissemination of poverty reduction research beyond the academic domain.

The first benchmarking session of all 24 universities was held in Johannesburg during June, resulting in the development of the first benchmarking report on research uptake in Africa in August.Many capacity building opportunities are also funded through this initiative www.drussa.net.

The institutional representatives at UFS are Prof Aldo Stroebel (stroebea@ufs.ac.za) and Dr Sonja Loots at (lootss@ufs.ac.za).
 

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept