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18 May 2021 | Story Ilse Smalberger

Ghanaian politician and revolutionary, Kwame Nkrumah, famously said: “We face neither East, nor West; we face forward.”

At a time when Africa can be torn between the economic and trade pressures of the East and the political demands of the West, it makes sense that moving the continent forward is a huge priority. This is a belief that lies at the heart of the University of the Free State’s (UFS) 2018-2022 Internationalisation Strategy.  This strategy follows the 2020 Policy Framework on the Internationalisation of Higher Education in South Africa, by seeking to further not only South Africa’s interests, but also the interests of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and Africa, among others.

Celebrating Africa Month

As part of celebrating Africa and advancing African unity, the UFS celebrates Africa Month in May, culminating in the Africa Day Memorial Lecture – this year held as a webinar on 19 May.  According to Dr Stephanie Cawood, Director of the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies that is hosting the Africa Day Memorial Lecture, Prof Walter D Mignolo, arguably one of the greatest scholars of decoloniality, will deliver the address.

“Since the inception of the Africa Day Memorial Lecture in 2009, we have hosted some of the greatest African intellectuals, including Profs Achille Mbembe, Ali Mazrui, Ngugi wa Thiongo’o, Mahmoud Mamdani, and Paul Zeleza, to name a few,” says Dr Cawood.  

As the home of research and study on Africa and its people at the UFS, she believes that it is important for this university to enlarge its footprint on the continent.

“Our destiny is intimately tied to the future of the continent, and there are exciting things happening in academia across the continent in spite of the many challenges,” she says. “For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented opportunities for innovation in Africa, such as the sequencing of the SARS-CoV-2 genome in Nigeria and South Africa.  In fact, the UFS was involved in the testing of vaccines.”

UFS engagement on the continent

The UFS has come a very long way towards improving its African footprint in terms of research collaboration and diversifying the African profile of both staff members and students.  At institutional and faculty level, the UFS has memoranda of understanding with 14 higher education and research institutions in Africa.  Between 2017 and 2021, the UFS collaborated with 285 institutions in Africa, which resulted in more than 2 000 co-authored publications – the top five subject areas for collaboration being Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Medicine, Social Sciences, Physics and Astronomy, and Environmental Science.

The UFS is also an active member of the Association of African Universities (AAU) and the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM).  Universities engaging with each other through these platforms contribute to capacity-building and development on the continent. 

A rich tapestry of international student life

Staff and students from Africa who enrol at the UFS also contribute to the rich tapestry of the university’s student life.  The UFS is currently home to students from as far afield as Egypt, Ethiopia, and Ivory Coast, but most of our African students hail from our neighbouring countries Lesotho and Zimbabwe. 

“Our international students from the African continent contribute significantly to creating a culturally and intellectually diverse environment on our campuses and provide our local students with an opportunity to obtain international experience without leaving the UFS,” comments Cornelius Hagenmeier, Director of the Office for International Affairs. 
One of our African students, Deborah Adesokan who was born in Nigeria, is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Criminology while working as an academic tutor in the Department of Sociology.  She says her experience at the UFS has been an eventful journey, with plenty of opportunities for personal and academic growth.  She is also very thankful for the awards and bursaries she has received.

“I applaud the UFS for giving African students the opportunity to apply for bursaries, as this is a major concern for many African students,” she says.  “I am also fortunate to have a job on campus related to my field of interest, which is academia, where I continue to gain valuable experience.”

Adesokan says she is looking forward to seeing the UFS affiliate with more universities in Nigeria by creating exchange programmes. 

Knowledge production for the continent

“Furthermore, I hope to see the university create an African community space where African scholars and leading researchers from various disciplines can converge to talk about and conduct research pertaining to the challenges faced by Africa.” 

With regard to the specific UFS African engagements and collaborations, there are just too many to mention in one article. 

Says Hagenmeier: “Colleagues in our seven faculties and three campuses enrich research, teaching, and engaged scholarship through their African engagements.”  

Definitely deserving of mention, is the UFS being part of the consortium ‘Fostering Research and Intra-African Knowledge Transfer through Mobility and Education (FRAME)’, consisting of five African universities that were awarded the highly competitive Intra-Africa Mobility Grant sponsored by the European Union. This project enables mobility of master’s and doctoral students and staff on the African continent. 

News Archive

UFS research project aims to stimulate reflection on theological studies
2017-06-20

Description: Book, Theology and post Apartheid condition  Tags: Book, Theology and post Apartheid condition

The first book in the ‘UFS Theological
Exploration’ academic series, called Theology
and the Post(Apartheid) Condition
, has just
been released.
Photo: Supplied

 

The first study book with the title Theology and the Post(Apartheid) Condition, which is part of a new academic series by the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of the Free State, is now available. Volume 1, compiled by Professor Rian Venter as editor, is the first book in the ‘UFS Theological Exploration’ academic series, which the faculty plans to release.

Transformation
Professor Venter says the transformation of processes and practices in communicating and creating knowledge has become an urgent task for public universities in a democratic South Africa. Much reflection has already gone into the methods and scope of transformation in higher education.

Although the faculty has done work on the implications of this for theology, there is one area of investigation that has not received much attention. It concerns the role of theological disciplines such as Old and New Testament, Missiology and Systematic Theology and Practical Theology, and specifically the relationship between academic disciplines and societal growth. The book focuses on these challenges and contains the intellectual undertakings of the contributors who are all lecturers, research fellows and post-graduate students linked to the faculty.

The questions
The key questions addressed are: what are the contours of the (post)apartheid condition and what are the implications for responsible discipline practices in theology. Professor Venter says the chapters in the book are logically arranged and moves from wider to more specific concerns. The first three chapters suggest broad perspectives on the challenges for theology in higher education, chart the changes, and make some suggestions for the future.

A dynamic field of study
The book states that theology has already experienced profound and radical changes over the past decade, which is known to us. All the chapters demonstrate these fundamental shifts, which have taken place in all theological sub-disciplines. Professor Venter says the contributions in the book illustrate that theology is a dynamic field of study, and is pursued with enthusiasm and commitment. Not all disciplines in theology are investigated for the book. However, the studies reflect the interests of the theologians in the Faculty of Theology at the UFS. Professor Venter hopes that the volume might stimulate further reflection of a similar nature by other theologians.

New insights
Through the ‘UFS Theological Exploration’ research series, the faculty hopes to stimulate new insights and new developments in academic progress and overall human growth. Series editor Professor Francois Tolmie says it is a fact that strong university research is necessary to achieve academic progress and advance human prospering. He says the faculty's research series will make a valuable contribution to these causes. Professor Tolmie says the ‘UFS Theological Explorations’ contains research of the highest academic standard which has been peer-reviewed to make significant educational contributions to core theological issues in South Africa and overseas.

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