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24 April 2025 | Story Martinette Brits | Photo Barend Nagel
Mainstream Final Project
Five postgraduate students from Ethiopia and Togo with Prof Corli Witthuhn, coordinator of the MAINSTREAM project, during their academic exchange visit to the University of the Free State. From the left: Prudence Bilabina, Ame Houngo, Prof Corli Witthuhn, Gemedo Shengu, Fanny Sibabi, and Debela Bedada.

The University of the Free State (UFS) has welcomed a cohort of international students as part of the Mobility 4 Agricultural International Networks Supporting Thematic Resilience and Enhancing Adaptation and Mitigation (MAINSTREAM) project, a significant European Union-funded initiative aimed at boosting agricultural education and research across the African continent.

A group of postgraduate students from Togo and Ethiopia have recently joined the University of the Free State as part of the MAINSTREAM project. “Two doctoral students from Togo – Ame Houngo and Fanny Sibabi – are based in the Department of Sustainable Food Systems and Development and will be supervised by Dr Alba du Toit and Prof Maryke Labuschagne,” says Prof Corli Witthuhn from the Department of Sustainable Food Systems and Development at the UFS, who serves as the coordinator of the MAINSTREAM project. Master’s student Prudence Bilabina, also from Togo, is hosted by the Department of Agricultural Economics under the supervision of Prof Henry Jordaan.

From Ethiopia, doctoral student Debela Bedada and master’s student Gemedo Shengu are both pursuing their research in the Department of Agricultural Economics, supervised by Prof Nicky Matthews and Dr Janus Henning respectively.

A Ugandan student will soon join them on 22 April for a three-month traineeship. “He is an undergraduate Agriculture student who will register for a service-learning module at the UFS and spend the three months working on a farm,” explains Prof Witthuhn. The student hails from the Mountains of the Moon University in Uganda.

By June 2025, the university anticipates the arrival of four more students from Uganda – three at master’s level and one traineeship participant – bringing the total number of MAINSTREAM students hosted by UFS this year to ten.

 

Building a climate-resilient future through agricultural education

The MAINSTREAM project aims to foster education and skills improvement in agricultural knowledge systems, with a strong focus on climate change resilience. According to Prof Witthuhn, the project “strives to influence the common agenda for addressing education and skills improvement … targeting transformations with the tertiary agricultural education community, policy, and industry actors”.

An important aspect of the initiative is its emphasis on inclusion, particularly regarding African women who remain underrepresented in higher education agricultural programmes. “Mobility schemes will also be used to break cross-African gendered perceptions of agriculture … and to further provide for a gender-sensitive learning environment and institutional culture,” Prof Witthuhn notes.

The UFS’ participation forms part of a larger network of partner institutions across Africa and Europe, including Arsi University (Ethiopia), the University of Kara (Togo), the Mountains of the Moon University (Uganda), Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology (JOOUST, Kenya), the University of Sine Saloum El Hadji Ibrahima Niasse (USSEIN, Senegal), and the Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Science (Germany).

 

Strengthening research, networks, and collaboration at the UFS

This four-year project, running from 2024 to 2027, will host two cohorts of students. “We are a partner in the project that will run over four years … one of the UFS master’s students, Rinus Behrens from the Department of Sustainable Food Systems and Development, is currently spending four months at JOOUST in Kenya as part of the programme,” adds Prof Witthuhn.

The presence of these students at the UFS marks a pivotal moment for both the institution and its international counterparts. “For the institution, it creates the opportunity for new networks, new research opportunities, internationalisation of our research endeavour, and increased research outputs,” she says.

During their stay, master’s and doctoral students will engage in academic research aligned with their fields of study, while traineeship students will gain hands-on agricultural experience on farms in the Bloemfontein area.

Bedada says the programme is already making a meaningful impact on his academic journey. “I am analysing the impact of agricultural mechanisation on food security and production. It is a big opportunity, because it gives me a chance to expand my knowledge and skills, and to develop my research work to international level.”

Similarly, Houngo says the experience so far has been enriching. “I have already learned a lot, and I hope to replicate the experience in my hometown,” he shares.

Behind the scenes, UFS staff and departments are instrumental in ensuring the programme’s success. “They provide host departments, academic leadership, and supervision to the six students,” says Prof Witthuhn, emphasising the collaborative effort required to support this international initiative.

News Archive

Dialogue between Science and Society series looks at forgiveness and reconciliation
2013-03-24

 

Taking part in the discussion on forgiveness and living reconciliation, were from left: Olga Macingwane, a survivor of the Worcester bombing of 1993; Dr Juliet Rogers, a Scholar on Remorse from the University of Melbourne in Australia and Dr Deon Snyman, Chairperson of the Worcester Hope and Reconciliation Process.
Photo: Mandi Bezuidenhout
24 March 2013

How do you, as a mother who lost her only daughter, forgive the man who claimed responsibility for the attack that killed her?  How do you forget his crime while travelling with him across the world?  

These were some of the questions posed to Jeanette Fourie at a Dialogue between Science and Society series on forgiveness and living reconciliation. Jeanette, whose daughter Lyndi was killed in an attack on the Heidelberg Pub in Cape Town in 1993, was one of three people telling their stories of forgiveness while dealing with traumatic experiences. 

Sitting next to Letlapa Mphahlele, the man who owned up to the attack that killed her daughter, Jeanette spoke about their story of forgiveness traveling the world together, spreading the message of forgiveness and conciliation. 

"Don't ever think you can forget, because that’s not possible. What you do with the pain is to find peace, and that's what forgiveness does. Forgiveness allows you to stop all the dialogue in your head on why he did it. You don't forget, you confront it and you deal with it." 

Letlapa, Director of Operations of Apla, the military wing of the PAC at the time of Lyndi's death, spoke about dealing with the response to his crime. "Sometimes you wish that you were not forgiven, because now you have the great burden of proving that you are worthy of forgiveness."

Also telling her story of forgiveness was Olga Macingwane, a survivor of the Worcester bombing of 1993 in which four people were killed and sixty-seven others injured. Four people were sent to prison. In 2009 Olga met one of the perpetrators, Stefaans Coetzee, and what came out of that meeting, is her story. 

"When I met Stefaans I was very angry, but when you sit down with somebody and listen to him or her, you find out what the reasons were that made him or her do something. I can say that I forgave him." 

Facilitating the conversation, Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Senior Research Professor on Trauma, Forgiveness and Reconciliation, said the seminar was meant to get in touch with the truth that forgiveness is possible. 

"Before we had the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa, the experts always said that forgiveness was not possible in these stories of the past. And then the TRC came into life as a response to mass atrocities. For the first time in the history of these traumatic experiences, of political traumas, we witness something that we have never seen.  Even us on the TRC, although it was framed as reconciliation, we never imagined there would actually be stories of forgiveness emerging out of that process, and then we witness that this too is possible." 

Others who took part in the two-hour-long seminar, were Dr Juliet Rogers, a Scholar on Remorse from the University of Melbourne in Australia and Dr Deon Snyman, Chairperson of the Worcester Hope and Reconciliation Process. They spoke about the dynamics behind the processes of engagement between victims/ survivors and perpetrators. 

The Dialogue between Science and Society series was co-hosted by the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice. 

 

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