UCT Inaugural Lecture: Professor Rudzani Muloiwa

11 July 2024 | Emeritus Professor Daya Reddy

Dear colleagues and students

I write to invite you to the next University of Cape Town (UCT) Inaugural Lecture, which will be presented by Professor Rudzani Muloiwa. This lecture marks the seventh instalment in this year’s series.

The lecture is titled "Human One, can these bones live? – Thirsting for the well-being of the Afrikan child in a world of becoming”.

The inaugural lectures are a central part of academic life and provide a platform for recently appointed professors to share insights into their activities and achievements. They also provide the university with an opportunity to showcase our academics and share our research with members of the wider university community and the general public in an accessible way.

Professor Muloiwa is the head of the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at UCT and Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital. He is also the co-director of the Vaccines for Africa Initiative (VACFA), which is located in the Faculty of Health Sciences.

Countries in Africa have some of the worst child well-being indicators in the world. If this situation is allowed to persist, the foreseeable future of the continent is bleak indeed. Does it matter? In his lecture, Professor Muloiwa suggests that perhaps it should. Taking a critical systems heuristics approach, the lecture proposes an imperative for cultivating courageous ways of seeing; ways that carry hope for creating contextually appropriate communal responses to the challenges of envisioning and creating an African future in which children can live and thrive.

Professor Muloiwa has an interest in the epidemiology of infectious diseases with an emphasis on those that are vaccine preventable, a topic on which his doctoral work was based. He serves as a member of the South African National Immunisation Technical Advisory Group (NAGI) – and the Regional Immunisation Technical Advisory Group (RITAG) for the World Health Organization’s region for Africa. What keeps him awake at night is the issue of equitable access to what would make it possible for children in Africa to live life to the full.

Your presence at this lecture would be greatly appreciated.

Date: Thursday, 25 July 2024
Time: 17:30 SAST
Venue: Neuroscience Institute Auditorium, Groote Schuur Hospital