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UFS welcomes international students through EU-funded MAINSTREAM Project

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

Research on cactus pear grabs attention of food, cosmetic and medical industry

2015-02-18

Cactus pear
Photo: Charl Devenish

The dedicated research and development programme at the UFS on spineless cactus pear (Opuntia ficus-indica) – also known as prickly pear – has grown steadily in both vision and dimension during the past 15 years. Formal cactus pear research at the UFS started with the formation of the Prickly Pear Working Group (PPWG) in June 2002. It has since gone from strength to strength with several MSc dissertations and a PhD thesis as well as popular and scientific publications flowing from this initiative.

According to Prof Wijnand Swart from the Department of Plant Sciences, the UFS is today recognised as a leading institution in the world conducting multi-disciplinary research on spineless cactus pear.

Cactus pear for animal feed

Increasing demands on already scarce water resources in South Africa require alternative sources of animal feed – specifically crops that are more efficient users of water. One alternative with the potential for widespread production is spineless cactus pear. It is 1.14 x more efficient in its use of water than Old man saltbush, 2.8 x more efficient than wheat, 3.75 x more efficient than lucerne and 7.5 x more efficient than rangeland vegetation.

“Studies on the use of sun-dried cactus pear cladodes suggest that it has the potential to provide some 25% of the basic feed resources required by South Africa’s commercial ruminant feed manufacturing sector,” says Prof HO de Waal of the Department of Animal, Wildlife and Grassland Sciences at the UFS.

Until recently, research has focused extensively on the use of cactus pear as drought fodder. However, this is now beginning to shift, with growing interest in the intensive production of spineless cactus pear for other types of animal feed. One example is the spineless cactus pear fruit, produced seasonal, yielding large quantities of fruit in a relatively short period of a few months in summer. Unless kept in cold storage, the fruit cannot be stored for a long period. Therefore, a procedure was developed to combine large volumes of mashed cactus pear fruit with dry hay and straw and preserve it for longer periods as high moisture livestock feed, kuilmoes – a high water content livestock feed similar to silage.

Cactus pear and Pineapple juice
Photo: Charl Devenish

Cactus pear for human consumption

“In addition to its use as a livestock feed, cactus pear is increasingly being cultivated for human consumption. Although the plant can be consumed fresh as a juice or vegetable, significant value can be added through processing. This potential is considerable: the plant can be pickled; preserved as a jam or marmalade; or dried and milled to produce baking flour. It can also serve as a replacement of egg and fat in mayonnaise,” said Dr Maryna de Wit from the Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology.

The extraction of mucilage from fresh cladodes can form a gelling, emulsifier, and fat-replacing agent commonly found in food products such as mayonnaise and candy. During an information session to the media Dr De Wit and her team conducted a food demonstration to showcase the use of the cladodes in a juice, chicken stir-fry, biscuits and a salad.

The extrusion of cactus pear seed oil provides a further lucrative niche product to the array of uses. These include high-value organic oil for the cosmetic sector, such as soap, hair gel and sun screens.

The cladodes and the fruit also have medicinal uses. It has anti-viral, anti-inflammatory, pain killing and anti-diabetic agents. It is also high in fibre and can lower cholesterol. The fruit also prevents proliferation of cells and suppresses tumour growth and can even help to reduce a hangover.

In South Africa the outdated perception of cactus pears as thorny, alien invaders, is rapidly disappearing. Instead, farmers now recognise that cactus pear can play a vital role as a high yielding, water-efficient, multi-use crop, said Prof de Waal and the members of the Cactus Pear Team.

Facebook photo gallery
Dagbreek interview with Dr Maryna de Wit

Research on cactus pear (read the full story)

For more information or enquiries contact news@ufs.ac.za

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