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Africa Month: Focus on Africa is key to UFS internationalisation process

24 May 2023 | Story Dr Cornelius Hagenmeier | Photo Barend Nagel

Click to view document #AfricaDay2023: ‘Africa is not a country, it’s a vast tapestry of innumerable stories’

A focus on the African continent is central to the University of the Free State’s (UFS) internationalisation strategy, which envisages an Africa-imbued internationalisation process that advances Africanisation and decolonisation, and includes a focus on expanding researcher networks across Africa.

The UFS considers internationalisation, Africanisation, and decolonisation as complementary processes, and prioritises engagements with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and African countries. The university’s Vision 130 emphasises the UFS’s commitment to the development of the African continent

One Africa together forever

Inspired by its commitment to Africa, the UFS celebrates Africa Month annually, under the motto ‘One Africa together forever'. Every year the campaign focuses on a different theme – this year, it is 'Promoting and appreciating knowledge in and from Africa'. This follows 'Celebrating African Education as a Conduit for African Unity’ in 2022 and ‘Solidarity in Knowledge Production and Recording’ in 2021. The diverse contributions from members of the UFS community, including all celebrations since 2019, are available from the Africa Month section of the UFS website.

The university's internationalisation strategy commits the UFS to co-creating knowledge across the African continent. Manifold collaborations with African universities underpin this. The number of scientific publications co-authored with colleagues across Africa is growing steadily. Between 2019 and 2022, UFS researchers collaborated with 381 African institutions, which resulted in 3 002 co-authored publications.

Strengthening formal partnerships with African universities is an important aspect of the UFS focus on Africa. This presently includes the University of Botswana, the University of Namibia, the National University of Lesotho, Niger Delta University, and the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. In an opinion piece published on the 2023 UFS Africa Month website, Prof Hussein Solomon of the UFS’s Centre for Gender and Africa Studies shares that “any memorandum of understanding needs to deliver on tangible outputs” and cites the example of a collaboratively edited book which he champions together with his Niger Delta University colleague Prof Jude Cocodia.

Flags of Africa

Developing partnerships on the continent

The university invests in strengthening existing and establishing new collaborations on the African continent. In 2022, it focused on developing new partnerships in Ghana and Gabon. In Ghana, it was possible to leverage existing collaborations championed by Prof Loyiso Jita, Dean of the UFS Faculty of Education, to establish institutional collaboration with the University of the Cape Coast and formalise the relationship with the University of Ghana. In Uganda, the UFS established a new collaboration with Busitema University, which is championed by Prof Motlalepula Matsabisa from the Faculty of Health Sciences.

New partnerships were initiated with three Gabonese higher education institutions, including the International Centre for Medical Research in Franceville (CIRMF). The institution's Director-General, Prof Jean Bernard Lekana-Douki, and the Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS, Prof Francis Petersen, signed a memorandum of understanding in April 2023.

Collaboration had already commenced with a visit by the CIRMF's Dr Judicaël Obame to the UFS Department of Zoology and Entomology in December 2022, during which he delivered a guest lecture and conducted a workshop on mosquito rearing. The targeted engagement with Gabon also resulted in a delegation from École de Management du Gabon University (EM-Gabon) led by its President, Prof Daniel Idiata, visiting the UFS in November 2022 and subsequently formalising its collaboration with the UFS. Together with the Masuku University of Science and Technology, also located in Gabon, PhD co-supervision commenced as a result of the new partnership.

Qwaqwa-campus-based Dr Patricks Otomo, who champions the collaboration and serves as the campus Subject Head: Zoology and Entomology, explains: “As a student in Gabon in the early 2000s, I benefited from an agreement between the Masuku University of Science and Technology, where I was an undergraduate student at the time, and Stellenbosch University. This agreement allowed me to further my studies in South Africa, eventually earning my honours, master’s, and PhD at Stellenbosch University. Knowing the benefits of such agreements and the potential for internationalisation at the UFS, two years ago I approached the Vice-Rector for Research and Internationalisation, Prof Corli Witthuhn, with the idea of intensifying the UFS collaboration with my home country, Gabon. Together with Prof Witthuhn and Dr Cornelius Hagenmeier, Director of the UFS Office for International Affairs, we visited three higher education institutions in the country. We explored collaboration with a specific focus on PhD education. The response was overwhelming: in a short period, it was possible to develop lively partnerships with all three institutions.”

One of the UFS’s important regional partners is the National University of Lesotho. Prof Petersen visited it in 2022 to strengthen the existing multi-layered collaboration, which is underpinned by a memorandum of understanding. Joint activities are taking place through the Directorate for Research Development, which coordinates the Lesotho Highlands Water Project; the Faculty of Education, the Departments of Pharmacology, Political Studies, and Africa Studies; and the Afromontane Research Unit on the UFS Qwaqwa Campus.

Flags of Africa

Connecting the UFS to African philosophy and knowledge paradigms

UFS academics are constantly at the forefront of producing and disseminating cutting-edge work on the African continent. During Africa Month, the UFS, in partnership with Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet, hosted the first Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV) Africa Conference, at which experts from 16 countries – including 12 African countries – deliberated on CCHFV. It was co-organised by Prof Felicity Burt, an expert in arbovirology from the UFS’s Division of Virology in the Faculty of Health Sciences.

Another example of the UFS's research leadership in Africa is that Prof Martin Nyaga, Head of the UFS Next Generation Sequencing (UFS-NGS) Unit, chairs the Africa Centre for Communicable and Preventable Diseases (Africa CDC) working group on Vaccine Preventable Diseases (VPD). Meanwhile, research collaboration in the Humanities is also flourishing. For example, Prof Chitja Twala, Vice-Dean in the Faculty of the Humanities, has a long-standing relationship with the University of Ghana’s Department of History, and travelled to the partner university in 2022 for an extended research visit.

The UFS is also engaged in many African university networks, which ensures that the university is part of contemporary African higher education discourses. For example, the UFS is an active member of the Association of African Universities (AAU), the Southern African Regional Universities Association (SARUA), and the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) .

Through its manifold African collaborations, the UFS lives up to the commitment expressed in its internationalisation strategy: to connect the UFS to African philosophy and knowledge paradigms. Moreover, the UFS’s engagements throughout Africa ensure that the university contributes significantly to promoting and appreciating knowledge in and from Africa.

UFS Rector and Vice Chancellor Prof Francis Petersen summarised this poignantly during the 2022 UFS Africa Month: “Our engagement with the world needs to ensure that the knowledge emanating from our university, our country, and our continent is shared globally.”

The UFS’s collaborations with institutions across Africa make a significant contribution in this regard.

News Archive

Position statement: Recent reporting in newspapers

2014-10-03

Statement by the Institutional Forum of the University of the Free State

You may have read reports in two Afrikaans newspapers, regarding recent events at the University of the Free State (UFS). Sadly, those reports are inaccurate, one-sided, exaggerated and based not on facts, but on rumour, gossip and unusually personal attacks on members of the university management.

Anyone who spends 10 minutes on our Bloemfontein Campus would wonder what the so-called ‘crisis’ is about.

We are left with no choice other than to consider legal action, as well as the intervention of the South African Press Ombudsman, among other steps, to protect the good name of the institution and the reputation of its staff. No journalist has the right to launch personal and damaging attacks on a university and its personnel, whatever his or her motives, without being fair and factual. In this respect, the newspapers have a case to answer.

But here are the facts in relation to the reports:

No staff member, whether junior or senior, is ever suspended without hard evidence in hand. Such actions are rare, and when done, are preceded by careful reviews of our Human Resource Policies, labour legislation and both internal and external legal advice. Then, and only then, is a suspension affected. A suspension, moreover, does not mean you are guilty and is a precautionary action to allow for the disciplinary investigation and process to be conducted, especially where there is a serious case to answer.
At no stage was the Registrar instructed to leave the university; this is patently false and yet reported as fact. We specifically responded to the media that the Registrar does outstanding work for the university and that it is our intention for him to remain as our Registrar through the end of his contract in 2016.
The Rector does not make decisions by himself. Senior persons, from the position of Dean, upwards, are appointed by statutory and other senior committees of the university and finally approved by Council. No rector can override the decision of a senior committee, and this has not happened at the UFS even in cases where the Rector serves as Chair of that committee. The impression of heavy-handed management at the top insults all our committee structures, including the Institutional Forum – the widest and most inclusive of stakeholder bodies at a university – which reports directly to Council on fairness and compliance of selection processes.
In the case of senior appointments, Council makes the final decision. Council fully supports the actions taken on senior appointments, including a recent senior suspension. The fact that one Council member resigns just before the end of his term, whatever the real reason for this action, does not deter from the fact that the full Council in its last sitting approved the major staffing decisions brought before it. The image therefore that the two newspapers try to create of great turmoil and distress at the university, is completely unfounded.

Even if we wanted to, the university obviously cannot provide details about staffing decisions, especially disciplinary actions in process, since the rights of individuals should be protected in terms of the Human Resource Policies and procedures of the UFS. But that does not give any newspaper the right to speculate or state as fact that which is based on rumour or gossip, or to slander senior personnel of the university. For these reasons, we have been forced to seek legal remedy and correction as a matter of urgency.

Make no mistake, underlying much of the criticism of the university has been a distress about transformation at the UFS; in particular, the perception is created that white colleagues are losing their jobs. The evidence points in the opposite direction. Our progress with equity has been slow and we lag far behind most of the former white universities; that is a fact. More than 90% of our professors are white; most of our senior appointments at professorial level and as heads of department are still overwhelmingly white. Reasonable South Africans would agree that our transformation still has a long way to go and only the mean-spirited would contend otherwise. But based on the two Afrikaans newspaper reports, an impression is left of the aggressive rooting out of white colleagues.

In the past few years the academic standard of the university has significantly improved. We now have the highest academic pass rates in years, in part because we raised the academic standards for admission four years ago. We now have the highest rate of research publications, and among the highest national publication rate of scholarly books, in the history of the UFS. We have one of the most stable financial situations of any university in South Africa, with a strong balance sheet and growing financial reserves way beyond what we had before. We now attract top professors from around the country and other parts of the world, and we have the highest number of rated researchers, through the National Research Foundation, than ever before. And after the constant turmoil of a number of years ago, we now have one of the most stable campuses in South Africa. Those are the facts.

The UFS is also regarded around the world as a university that has become a model of transformation and reconciliation in the student body. The elections of our Student Representative Council are only the most visible example of how far we have come in our leadership diversity. Not a week goes by in which other universities, nationally and abroad, do not come to Kovsies to consult with us on how they can learn from us and deepen their own transformations, especially among students.

Rather than focus on what more than one senior journalist, in reference to the article in Rapport of 21 September 2014, rightly called ‘a hatchet job’ on persons and the university, here are the objective findings of a recent survey of UFS stakeholders: 92% endorse our values; 77% agree with our transformation; 78% believe we are inclusive; and 78% applaud our overall reputation index. Those are very different numbers from a few years ago when the institution was in crisis.

This is our commitment to all our stakeholders: we will continue our model of inclusive transformation which provides opportunities for study and for employment for all South Africans, including international students and colleagues. We remain committed to our parallel-medium instruction in which Afrikaans remains a language of instruction; we are in fact the only medical school in the country that offers dual education and training in both Afrikaans and English for our students - not only English. We provide bursaries and overseas study opportunities to all our students, irrespective of race. And our ‘future professors’ programme is richly diverse as we seek the academic stars of the future.

We are not perfect as a university management or community. Where we make mistakes, we acknowledge them and try to do better the next time round. But we remain steadfast in our goal of making the UFS a top world university in its academic ambitions and its human commitments.

END

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