We are pleased to announce that the University of Johannesburg in collaboration with the University of Zululand and the University of Glasgow has been awarded a grant of 3,976,000 Rand by the Department of Higher Education and Training in South Africa and the British Council through the Newton Fund in order to enhance the capacity of 10 permanent academics in South Africa through doctoral studies in the following fields: local development; entrepreneurship, sustainable development goals 1, 2 and 4, education and fourth industrial revolution technologies that will support municipalities in local development to improve the quality of lives of communities.

The University of Johannesburg (UJ) represented by the Centre for Local Economic Development (CENLED), the host of the PASCAL’s African centre, and its Director, Dr Marius Venter. The University of Glasgow’s role will be co-ordinated by Dr Margaret Sutherland, Director of Post-Graduate Research in the School of Education and a PASCAL Associate,  and that of the University of Zululand by Professor Lorraine Greyling.

The main features of the project are: 

The establishment of a sustainable joint Doctoral Learning Academy by the universities is anticipated to attain the following objectives:

1. Enable the universities to supervise research projects that will serve the South African local development agenda, taking the following criteria into account:
2. An innovative collaborative supervision model to ensure completion by doctoral candidates within 4 or less years.
3. Serving the North-South agenda; 
4. Interdisciplinary, notably involving international scholars;
5. Innovation through research; 
6. Contribute to the aims of the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) in terms of entrepreneurship and community development in the post-school sector;

Roles and responsibilities of the Partners: All partners are involved in the planning and implementation of the workshops to be presented by the Doctoral Learning Academy. UJ will be the lead university and will provide the Project Manager/Project Coordinator, PhD Development Manager, and an Administrator, while the other two partners will each provide Project coordinators. All three partners will provide three supervisors each. The partners are committed to equity, accessibility, accountability, transparency, innovation and responsiveness. 

In conclusion, this project is also aligned with the strategic objectives of the universities, namely, to enable the ten PhD candidates to undertake cutting edge research to inform curriculum development that is fit for purpose; attain community engagement to action the implementation of the sustainable development goals to improve lives, result in innovation that will improve municipal service delivery, education with a focus on life-long learning and entrepreneurship strategies to assist existing and aspiring entrepreneurs; and contribute to competence development to become a creative scholar with compassion that will endeavour to narrow the gap between the executive leadership of their university, students, communities, industry and other stakeholders.

This provides an example of excellent collaboration between two PASCAL centres.