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30 May 2025
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Story Prof Mikateko Mathebula
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Photo Supplied
Pictured (from left to right): Prof Faith Mkwananzi, Dr Kapambwe Mwelwa, Prof Lochner Marais, Prof Chikumbutso Manthalu, and Prof Mikateko Mathebula.
Through collaborative agreements with the University of Malawi and the University of Zambia, the University of the Free State (UFS) has established the Research Alliance for Higher Education in Africa (RAHEdA), a dynamic initiative aimed at enhancing research capacity and partnerships within Sub-Saharan Africa.
The collaborative agreements align with the UFS’s Vision 130 strategy in relation to internationalisation, emphasising the important role that intra-African mobility visits play in establishing relationships with universities on the continent. It also fosters knowledge exchange and engagement and allows for careful planning and strategy meetings.
“During these discussions, an ambitious but feasible roadmap was laid out for the next three to five years,” Prof Mkwananzi said. “These activities include online workshops for staff and postgraduate students at all partner institutions, and a new webinar series that focuses on profiling, advancing, and celebrating thought leaders, higher education scholars, and scholarship in Africa.”
The inaugural webinar was held on 21 May 2025. Speaker Prof Siseko Kumalo, Associate Professor at the University of Johannesburg’s Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education Studies, spoke on ‘Orality as the Bulwark of the Humanities?’, set the bar high for the webinar series through his compelling and original response to this timely question, as scholars around the world contemplate appropriate responses to the rise and influence of artificial intelligence in higher education teaching, learning, and assessment.
Funding to support RAHEdA has been generously provided by Prof Melanie Walker, Distinguished Professor and SARChI Chair in Higher Education and Human Development.
• For information on how to get involved and for updates on RAHEdA, please contact Prof Mikateko Mathebula at MathebulaM@ufs.ac.za
Universities can contribute to economic transformation
2010-01-27
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At the lecture were, from the left: Prof. Neil Heideman (Acting Dean: Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences), Prof. Hartmut Frank (University of Bayreuth, Germany), Prof. Bianchi and Prof. Jan van der Westhuizen (professor in Chemistry at the UFS).
Photo: Mangaliso Radebe |
Universities have a role to play in economic transformation and industrial development according to Prof. Fabrizio Bianchi, the Rector of the University of Ferrara in Italy.
This was the core message of his lecture on the topic Globalisation, Agriculture and Industrial Development that he delivered at the University of the Free State.
He said after the collapse of the agricultural industry in Italy as a result of the subsidies that the farmers were receiving from the government, the university had to step in.
“This was meant to maintain high prices and maximize the production but in the long run this approach created problems because the farmers were no longer producing high quality products but large quantities in order to receive subsidies,” he said.
“The result was that the government itself had to destroy those poor quality products. This was a completely unreasonable way to manage the economy”.
He said they had to abandon that approach and concentrate on quality because they realized that Italy could not match the prices and the quantity, in terms of production, of countries like China and the USA.
He said “knowledge and human resources” were the key factors that could get them out of that crisis; hence they came up with what he called “the Made in Italy approach”.
“We were working on the idea that food is part of culture and that it is not just simply for refueling the body,” he said.
“One of the fundamental ideas was to come back to the idea that production is the centre of the development process.”
“Quality is a very complex, collective issue,” he said. “You cannot understand development if you do not understand that you have to base it on strong roots”.
This approach resulted in the formation of several companies with specialized niche markets producing high quality products.
His visit to the UFS coincided with that of the 1991 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Prof. Richard Ernst from Switzerland, who was also part of the fourth presentation of the Cheese fondue concept.
The main thrust of this concept is that technical advances alone are insufficient for an agreement to be reached on the minimum respect between the various groups and individuals within a society. It proposes that for this to be achieved there has to be a concurrent development of empathy and emotional synergy.
Media Release
Issued by: Mangaliso Radebe
Assistant Director: Media Liaison
Tel: 051 401 2828
Cell: 078 460 3320
E-mail: radebemt@ufs.ac.za
27 January 2010