Join the Southern African Regional Universities Association (SARUA) for the launch of a regional Master's curriculum on climate change, supported by CDKN. The event will present the first opportunity for various stakeholders to engage with the full spectrum of outputs that has been generated through out the course of the project, and network with various stakeholder of the curriculum innovation network to explore collaboration opportunities.

DATE: Thursday 1 December 2016

TIME: 18h00 – 22h00

VENUE: Alpine Attitude Boutique Hotel & Conference Venue, Pretoria, South Africa

SARUA has developed a regional curriculum on climate change and sustainable development for southern Africa. This launch is a culmination of all the work that has gone into the production of the curriculum. In, 2010 SARUA hosted a leadership dialogue where southern African Universities vice-chancellors and representatives highlighted that universities can make a significant contribution to building regional resilience to climate variability and change through teaching and research. SARUA was tasked to establish a deputy vice-chancellor working group to pursue the issue.

In 2012, SARUA engaged CDKN for support the advance of southern Africa Universities’ contribution to the climate change and sustainable development issues in the region. This was kicked off through an 18-month-long mapping study to verify and define knowledge and research gaps in the field of climate change in southern Africa, covering 12 countries and involving 1,654 stakeholders. One of the recommendations of the report was the development of a curriculum innovation network on climate change and sustainable development.

In pursuance of this, a seven University consortium from southern Africa was put together to develop a curriculum framework, modules, courseware guidelines, etc. which were extensively reviewed and validated by various stakeholders in the climate change and sustainable development space in the region. During the course of this year, regional capacity development workshops were conducted with lecturers from interested and participating universities to equip academics to prepare and deliver the programme, and to facilitate access to the learning material on the user-friendly, open source platform.

Speakers

• Prof Primrose Kurasha, Vice-Chancellor: Zimbabwe Open University & Chairperson of SARUA
• Dr Molapo Qhobela, CEO of the National Research Foundation (SA)
• Prof Heila Lotz-Sisitka, SARChl Chair, Rhodes University
• Mr Carl Wesselink, Africa Director: Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN)

Live Online Platform Demonstration

The event will include a first demonstration of the online platform developed for collaboration, learning and hosting of the curriculum and related resources

Multi-media Exhibition

A multi-media exhibition of the timeline and achievements of the SARUA Programme for Climate Change Capacity Development will be presented including;

• The 2013-14 Climate change counts mapping study
• The 2015-16 regional Master’s curriculum development process and curriculum
• The 2016 Curriculum Capacity Development workshops
• Video highlighting the lessons from the entire PCCCD programme
• Collaboration opportunities for further regional networking

For more information on SCIN, contact Phiwokuhle Kgatla via scin@sarua.org or Botha Kruger on 083-4637045.

Watch the SARUA film here.