The University of Cape Town (UCT) has a long and proud history of producing changemakers: graduates and academics who improve lives by applying their knowledge to solve societal challenges. Students also have opportunities to practise this important social responsiveness imperative in their degree programmes.  

In 2023, students in the Department of Construction Economics and Management in the Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment (EBE) won seven out of nine Greenovate project categories in the prestigious Growthpoint Green Building Council South Africa competition, which seeks to promote environmental, economic, and social sustainability.

An EBE academic, Clint Abrahams in the Department of Architecture, Planning & Geomatics, earned the 2022 Social Responsiveness Award for a project he led to build community pride in Macassar: a low-income community that was originally filled with workers in the fishing and boatmaking industries, and later became an apartheid district. Students in the School of Architecture collaborated with the community to refurbish a historic building, Bong’s Inn, as a community hall and storytelling place. The project promoted local pride in the identity, untold histories and stories of Macassar’s residents and tapped into their local knowledge about “building with scarcity”.

Projects like these highlight higher education’s ability to effect change that improves lives. Long before the introduction in 2015 of the United Nations’ Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) and the African Union’s Agenda 2063 for continental development, UCT was focusing on the same outcomes for South Africa and the continent. Most recently, our Vision 2030 Grand Challenges Programmes and Pilot Projects have encouraged academics and students to focus on specific needs, such as:

• creating a powerful platform for mothers to advocate for change and challenge policy makers to address systemic issues that impact women and their families, through the Motherload Photovoice Exhibition
• launching PACK Child: a Practical Approach to Care Kit (PACK) to support clinicians on the frontline in rural and marginalised areas who treat children at primary healthcare level
• analysing and improving legal regulatory systems across Africa to speed up the achievement of the SDGs, including better access to healthcare, environmental sustainability, food and research materials for quality education, through the “Regulation for Innovation: Inclusive and Sustainable Knowledge Governance in Lower-income Countries” project
• providing free access to law online in African countries
• the relaunch of UCT Press to increase open access publishing and facilitate a print-on-demand approach to support the dissemination of African-based academic knowledge and research outcomes
• a range of initiatives to improve the prevention and treatment of health conditions, promote economic sustainability and address the many effects of climate change – among others.

Students in UCT’s entrepreneurial programmes also seek to address social problems. This focus has helped UCT entrants to regularly place at or near the top of the annual Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education (EDHE) Intervarsity competition.

Many of UCT’s projects rely heavily on the involvement of donors and sponsors who share our commitment to social responsiveness. We are thankful for the opportunities we have to collaborate with such partners across South Africa, Africa and the world.

Professor Elelwani Ramugondo
DVC: Transformation, Student Affairs and Social Responsiveness

UCT Knowledge Co-op: Research meets community-based organisations

The University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Knowledge Co-op recently hosted a networking event on campus to allow community partners and academics to explore possibilities for collaboration and pinpoint some of the improvements they can make to their programmes. The Knowledge Co-op provides a channel for community-based organisations to access UCT’s skills, resources and professional expertise by matching community groups with academic partners in a collaboration that meets the needs for research or practical support identified by the community group. In the case of research projects, these are mostly taken up by students as projects that are conducted under the supervision of a senior academic for their dissertations; and at the networking sessions, community organisations shared about collaborative projects they had worked on with UCT students and researchers.

Policy action essential to care for SA’s growing number of older people

Addressing the gaps for long-term care of older people in southern Africa is critical for their well-being and that of their caregivers. And it requires mobilisation from government, civil society and academia to lead policy development and implementation processes to support this overlooked sector of society. This was according to Dr Gabrielle Kelly, co-lead on the University of Cape Town (UCT)-led Family Care of Older Persons in Southern Africa Programme. Dr Kelly is a senior research associate at the Samson Institute for Ageing Research (SIFAR) – a UCT partner institution. The Family Care of Older Persons in Southern Africa Programme is led by Associate Professor Elena Moore in UCT’S Department of Sociology and aims to explore and provide a better understanding of the meaning of family care for older people in southern Africa. As part of this work, Kelly has now released new research in a policy brief titled: “Addressing the gaps in long-term care for older people in southern Africa.” This work is based on an article co-written by the University of Botswana’s Dr Miriam Sebego and recently published in the International Journal of Care and Caring, as part of a special issue on Family Care for Older Persons in Southern Africa.

HPV vaccinations crucial for people living with HIV

Implementing a national public health policy that requires that all people living with HIV be vaccinated against the human papilloma virus (HPV) as soon as their HIV diagnosis has been confirmed is necessary to reduce the high HPV incidence rate in South Africa, said the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Professor Anna-Lise Williamson. Professor Williamson is a world-renowned HPV researcher based in the Division of Virology in the Department of Pathology in UCT’s Faculty of Health Sciences. She also holds the South African National Research Chair’s Initiative (SARChI) in Vaccinology. Williamson delivered the keynote address during a belated HPV Awareness Day seminar held on Thursday, 9 March. International HPV Awareness Day is observed annually on 4 March. The hybrid event was hosted by Professor Lynette Denny, the director of UCT’s Gynaecological Cancer Research Centre (GCRC) and the seminar speaker line-up included scholars at the forefront of the fight against HPV locally and globally.

Human Rights Day: ‘Refugees are people with rights and aspirations’

“As a foreigner living in South Africa, your refugee status underpins the treatment you receive. We need to work twice as hard as South African citizens to achieve the same result, while being discriminated against and obnoxiously labelled and distained.” So says Innocent Biringanine, a Congolese national and third-year audiology student at the University of Cape Town (UCT). This Human Rights Day, Innocent openly shared some of his family’s struggles as they journeyed from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to seek refuge in South Africa. But on arrival, life was challenging, especially for Innocent. He endured years of emotional turmoil at the hands of his classmates – only because he looked and spoke differently. Innocent said he was ridiculed regularly and openly discriminated against, acts that affected his mental health.

Putting trans communities into transformation policies across SA campuses

Hosted by the University of Cape Town (UCT), in a building selected for its availability of gender-neutral bathrooms, the Model Policy Framework for Inclusion of Trans and Gender-Diverse Students within Higher Education Institutions in South Africa was launched to help counter institutional challenges and administrative procedures. At its heart is the welcome, inclusion, and mental and physical well-being of students who experience amplified vulnerabilities in a world set up for clear-cut (cis) heteronormativity. This impacts everything from bureaucracy around gender identification and enrolment forms, through gender identity and names on class lists, within lecture halls and on graduation certificates, to bathroom and residence usage. It also includes access to appropriate healthcare, sporting codes and the potential of bullying, personal safety, and security responses.

Youth Month: Alumni’s DIY foam fire extinguisher most popular hack

A do-it-yourself (DIY) foam fire extinguisher developed in 2015 by two University of Cape Town (UCT) students to combat fires in informal settlements has been given a new lease of life via international open-sharing platform dooiy.org. The device was designed for their final-year chemical engineering project. The former high school and university mates and graduates Desania Govender and Yandisa Sojola are now working in Ireland and Secunda respectively. Eight years ago, the pair took an existing idea for a DIY fire extinguisher and developed it for communities living in shacks, where fire is a constant hazard. This threat has grown with loadshedding as more families turn to candles and paraffin to light and fuel their homes. The low-cost foam extinguisher uses common household products and waste. The basics are a two-litre cooldrink bottle, water, vinegar, dishwashing liquid and bicarbonate of soda.

Student communities can become safer as ASSIST tool launched for addiction risk

In an effort to build safer student communities, the web app Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test (ASSIST) has been launched in a bid to detect risky substance use, which contributes to social ills, including crime and gender-based violence. The International Technology Transfer Centre South Africa (ITTC), which is based at The University of Cape Town (UCT), developed and piloted the tool in collaboration with several national government departments, including Social Development; Justice and Correctional Services; and Higher Education, Science and Technology, among others. Student health and wellness aide group Higher Health was also represented at the launch event held at UCT’s Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS).

UCT prof part of report which charts way forward for Paris Agreement on climate change

A key technical report, which had Professor Harald Winkler from the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) School of Economics as one of the two facilitators, has found that many creative and actionable solutions to overcome climate change challenges are ready to be implemented. The report is a global stocktake on implementation progress made on the Paris Agreement was published on Tuesday, 12 September. While parties to the Paris Agreement in 2015 have taken widespread actions to address climate change and its impacts, ambition and implementation must be accelerated rapidly. Social inclusion and equity are deemed essential to broaden such actions. The global stocktake was designed under the Paris Agreement to assess the global response to the climate crisis and chart a better way forward. The global stocktake is held every five years and this latest stocktake is intended to inform the next round of nationally determined contributions to be put forward by 2025.

New pharmacy paves way for targeted student wellness

The University of Cape Town (UCT) now has a student wellness pharmacy aimed at not only improving how students interact with the healthcare services provided to them, but also to enhance their student experience. Housed at the Ivan Toms Building, the recently launched pharmacy will increase students’ healthcare offering, while also shedding the load on some of the Student Wellness Service (SWS) staff. Dr Memory Muturiki, the director of SWS, said: “This is one of our greatest moments because it is the first time UCT has a pharmacy on campus that is licenced and can trade for students.” As a division of the Department of Student Affairs (DSA), the SWS pharmacy, Dr Muturiki said, means access to primary healthcare will be increased because SWS was previously limited in the kind of medication that they could offer to students.

UCT GSB Library drives blood stem cell donation

The University of Cape Town (UCT) Graduate School of Business (UCT GSB) Library is on a mission to increase the pool of blood stem cell (bone marrow) donors in South Africa and lend a hand in the global fight against blood cancers. To get the wheels in motion, the library partnered with DKMS Africa – a non-profit organisation dedicated to fighting blood cancers and improving the survival rate among patients with this group of diseases. The organisation’s goal is to recruit a continent-wide, ethnically diverse registry of donors committed to helping anyone in need of a life-saving transplant. After much thought, UCT GSB library manager, Mary Lister, said she requested that DKMS Africa provide the library with a batch of swab kits. And since September the library team has been encouraging students and staff to get swabbed – the first, significant step in the stem cell donor registration process. “It didn’t take much convincing. DKMS Africa were enthusiastic about the idea because they’re always looking at ways to get into communities to promote awareness on stem cell donation and to ultimately increase the number of stem cell donors on the registry,” Lister said.