The South African family is in crisis according to an SAIRR Report

South African families are in crisis according to a recent report released by the South African Institute of Race Relations. The report “The First Steps to Healing the South African Family”, documents the extent of family breakdown in South Africa and the effect this is having on children and the youth.

Some of the statistics that can be found in the report are:

• Of the 9.1 million double orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2005, around 5.2 million (almost 60%) had lost at least one of their parents to AIDS
• South Africa has 859 000 double orphans (children who have lost both parents) (2008 figures)
• South Africa has 2 468 000 paternal orphans (2008 figures)
• South Africa has 624 000 maternal orphans (2008 figures)
• 3.95 million children in South Africa had lost 1 or both parents by 2008 which means an increase of about one third since 2002
• Almost half of all orphans and two-thirds of double orphans in South Africa were between the ages of 12 and 17 years
•  481 994 double orphans were enrolled in ordinary schools in South Africa in 2008
• 1 661 275 children whose mother or father had died were enrolled in ordinary schools in South Africa in 2008
• Medical Research Council’s estimates in 2002 were that in 2015 some 5 700 000 children in Southern Africa would have lost one or both parents to AIDS

To more go to TimesLive’s article by Clicking Here!

To download the full report Click Here!

25% of Doctorate students at South African Universities are foreigners

 A quarter of all doctoral graduates in South Africa are not from this country, according to the Council on Higher Education, and around one in 10 postgraduate students are foreign. Attracting students from other Southern African countries, especially postgraduates, is an explicit policy aimed at developing research in the region. But efforts to grow the number of research postgraduates are being thwarted by lack of supervision capacity.

In 2007 there were some 60,000 international students in this country, representing 8% of the total student population. according to Higher Education Monitor – The state of higher education in South Africa, published by the Council on Higher Education (CHE) late last year.

To read more go to Karen MacGregor’s article in University World News by Clicking Here!

Pan-African University to launch in February 2010

The Pan-African University, envisaged as a continental network of institutions training postgraduate students and promoting research, is set to open its doors in February 2010.  The Pan African University (PAU), supported by the African Union, will not construct a new higher education infrastructure – at least not for now – but will use existing universities as satellites across the continent to train masters and PhD students. It will eventually comprise a main campus linked to a network of five regional centres, chosen for their academic and research strength and the relevance of their work to Africa’s needs. The centres will be located in North, West, East, Central and Southern Africa. To read the rest of Munyaradzi Makoni’s article on University World News Click Here!

SARUA Handbook 2009: a guide to public universities of Southern Africa published

The Southern African Regional Universities Association(SARUA) recently published Southern Africa’s first regional guide to its universities. The guide provides information about the institutions while also showing how historical trends over the last 50 years have influenced the development of higher education. 

The full text of the guide is available for free on SARUA’s site. Click Here!

Opening Access to Knowledge in Southern African Universities

“The Southern African Regional Universities Association last year published an important report titled Opening Access to Knowledge in Southen African Universities. This report identified key constraints in access to knowledge in universities in the SADC Region and builds on the findings from two earlier studies of  SARUA, A Status Review of ICT in Universities in the SADC Region (2006), and Science and Technology: A Baseline Study on Science and Technology and Higher Education in the SADC Region (2007).

The authors show that the presence of research from Africa in leading international peer-reviewed journals is diminishing, and also highlights the obstacles that prevent the majority of African research from ever receiving an adequate profile or readership within African research communities, and internationally. Reasons for the restictions on access to knowledge in Africa, and particularly in the Southern African Region are shown to revolve around restrictive copyright practices and regulations, and a lack of access to Internet-based technologies, out-dated paradigms for knowledge collection and dissimination, and the lack of creative and effective government supported enabling environments within higher education to match the vision of African leaders for knowledge and innovation in Africa in the 21st Century.” (From the foreword to the Report by Piyushi Kotecha)

To read the report Click Here!