Jaaroorsig - University of the Free State

all the SADC countries, as well as Kenyaand Ethiopia and even from Europe.At the launch of the new Centre for Plant Health Management (CePHMa) were, from the left:Mr John Purchase (General Manager: Grain SA), Prof. Zakkie Pretorius (Chairperson:Department of Plant Sciences at the UFS) and Prof. Wijnand Swart (Chairperson of CePHMa).CePHMa, an initiative of the Departmentof Plant Sciences, joins together tendisciplines, all of them relevant to cropproduction and crop protection. Its leadershiprole in African crop developmentis evident in its management of threeresearch programmes which concentrateon new crops. These are the New CropPathology Programme, the New CropDevelopment Programme, and Insectson New Crops Programme. It is also reflectedin the fact that many of its studentsare from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Malawi,Uganda, Zambia, Ghana, Tanzania, Cameroon,Angola, Mozambique and Lesotho.The Centre for Sustainable Agriculture,which has been offering a multidisciplinary,part-time master’s programmefor the past 14 years, developednew modules in focus areas such as sustainableplant and animal productionsystems, agribusiness management,rural development and marketing toaddress the needs of its students morecomprehensively. The new format led tomore students registering, mainly fromAfrica is constantly ravaged by majordisasters. Drought, plagues, floods, famineand Aids have cost millions of livesin the past decade. Since disasters do notrespect international borders, bettercooperation within SADC and the rest ofAfrica is needed to address the issue.The UFS is the only institution in Africathat offers a postgraduate qualificationwhich focuses on disaster risk management.Close to 20 students from SADCcountries enrolled for the programme,which is offered by the Disaster ManagementTraining and Education Programmefor Africa (DiMTEC).In the light of the importance of theFaculty of Economic and ManagementSciences to the private and public sectors,high-level inputs by the country’sbusiness leaders and opinion-makers arecrucial for the development of students.Among those who presented guest lectureswere prominent South Africanssuch as Messrs Tito Mboweni (Governorof the SA Reserve Bank), Sizwe Nxasana(Executive Head of FirstRand Bank),Zingile Dingani (Secretary to Parliament),Winston Mosiako (ExecutiveHead of Lechabile Technology) and DrMatthews Phosa (ANC executive member),as well as Ms Maria Ramos (GroupChief Executive of Transnet).The challenges facing the SouthAfrican community featured prominentlyin conference papers. At the conferenceof the Economic Society of SouthAfrica, the Department of Economicscovered topics such as the influence ofantiretroviral treatment on the quality oflife of patients, economic growth inAfrica, internal migration in SouthAfrica and minimum wages for domesticworkers. The Unit for Leadership Stu-12