The Insider - Walter Sisulu University

WSU delegation attends
International Rural Development
A
FOUR-member Walter Sisulu University delegation
attended the Annual International Rural
Development Conference that ran from the 17
to 23 April in New Delhi, India. They were part of a
40-member South African team led by the Minister of
the National Department of Rural Development and
Land Reform, Mr Gugile Nkwinti.
The WSU delegation was made up of Professor
Nomfundo Luswazi, Director of the Centre for Rural
Development (CRD), Dr Somadoda Fikeni, WSU Council
Chairperson, Professor Sandile Songca, Executive Dean
for the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology
and Mr Mzolisi Payi, Director for the Centre of Community
and International Partnerships.
The Conference brought together the emerging
economies of India, China, Brazil and South Africa. The
aim is to promote solidarity, especially exchange of
information, and best practices in Rural Development in
these countries.
WSU’s Professor Luswazi was selected due to the concept
and activities of the Centre for Rural Development’s
Annual Conference which has been running for five
years. Other South African delegates were selected
from NGOs, government departments, Higher Education
institutions and community-based organisations.
After the Conference the WSU delegation spent time at
the Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) in the Punjab
province in India. Speaking on the purpose of the visit
to PAU, Professor Luswazi recalled that the partnership
Conference
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between the PAU and WSU dates back to the 2007 WSU’s
CRD Annual Rural Development Conference when the
then Vice-Chancellor of PAU, Dr Kirpal Singh Aulakh,
addressed the Conference as a keynote speaker.
“He enlightened conference participants on the role
that agricultural universities have played in India, in the
Green Revolution. He maintained that forty years ago
the Punjab had been poorer than Transkei is today,” she
said.
She added that he emphasized how a policy change
transformed 39 universities in agriculture and led to
partnerships, which working together brought about
the Green Revolution in the Punjab and other parts of
India. The role of the agricultural universities has been
to produce high level scientists, agricultural managers
and practitioners as well as to conduct research that is
relevant to the problems of the region.
“WSU has studied this and other transformatory higher
education models in Africa and abroad. We are going to
visit PAU in order to see for ourselves, critically assess
the model and learn as much as we can.”
She believes that the experience will make an impact
upon the Eastern Cape and beyond if they are able to
share and infuse it into WSU programmes. “Exposure
to these agricultural universities will assist WSU in
its current big project of establishing a new Faculty
of Agriculture and Rural Development Studies,” she
concluded.
By Khuthala Nandipha
Delegates from the Walter Sisulu University and the SA National Department of Rural Development and Land Reform with the Management of
the Punjab University in New Delhi, India during the Conference.