Water and food security in South Africa
17 Dec 2010
In this article we take a look at the preparations for two new NICHE projects in South Africa which are currently in their 'inception phase'. The first is a € 1.6 million agricultural project developed by three universities, headed by the University of Limpopo. The other project (€ 1.5 million) focuses on Integrated Water Resource Management. The requesting organizations talk about their first experiences with NICHE and their expectations.
Focus on teaching, experiential learning and collective innovation
There is a growing concern in businesses and the community about how prepared agriculture graduates are for the workplace. In fact, today’s graduates fail to meet the expectations of employers and communities they are supposed to serve. In addition to lacking 'hard' technical skills they also appear to seriously lack 'soft' people skills.
Lack of relevance
Furthermore, the curricula at most universities typically lack a greater relevance to the needs of the society. This problem of under-prepared graduates is compounded by the low capacity of lecturing staff to facilitate active learning by students. Also, we should point out that most universities fail to deliver relevant and quality service to the agricultural sector, in particular the small-holder agricultural sector.
Action-research and new curricula
Three historically disadvantaged universities (Limpopo, Fort Hare and Venda) submitted a project proposal aimed at addressing the above shortcomings. The major aim of the project is to enhance action-research and integrate experiential and interactive learning in curricula that will respond to the labour market. Nuffic put our proposal out to tender.
Our Dutch partner in this project is the International Centre for development oriented Research in Agriculture (ICRA).
Preparing to get started
From 15 to 19 November we started our collaboration with ICRA with an inception workshop, which brought together all the project participants and other relevant stakeholders such as the Provincial Department of Agriculture, the Agricultural Research Council and local municipalities.
Together, we charted the way forward for the execution of the project, which is soon to start.
By Prof. David Norris – University of Limpopo
Capacity building for Integrated Water Resource Management
The overall objective of our project is to enhance the capacities of Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) and the University of Western Cape (UWC) in the area of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM). The project will aim to bridge the gap between higher education and the needs of the water sector and provide impetus for a more coherent and professional IWRM development framework.
A context-specific approach
Our specific vision is a challenge for our Dutch partners, in that it requires a context-specific approach to the needs in this sector in order to develop staff, curricula and infrastructure.
The approach is currently being discussed during the inception phase of our project and generated intensive debates on skills audit methodologies, alignment with sector skills planning and professional development frameworks.
Local level focus
The inception phase highlighted the need to facilitate synergies at the local level. We are also exploring how we can link up with another NICHE project in the water sector and with the Water Institute of Southern Africa (WISA).
Full engagement
We were pleasantly surprised by the level of engagement of our Dutch partner institutions (Wageningen University, Unesco IHE and ITC) with regard to the joint potential of available research and training support.
By Prof. Alvin Lagardien – Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT)
