Universities South Africa’s third higher education conference is set to be a deliberations powerhouse

Professor Tshilidzi Marwala (right), Rector at the United Nations (UN) University in Tokyo, Japan, will set the stage on Day One of the conference, leading a discussion on The Global Crisis and the Future University. Quite fitting, considering that this gathering will be dissecting the theme: the Future of the University in rigorous debates framed within the work of Universities South Africa and its strategy groups, communities of practice and flagship programmes.

Professor Marwala also serves as the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations – a role he assumed when he took up the UN University post in March 2023 after five years as Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Johannesburg (UJ). Within his portfolio as the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Professor Marwala functions as a representative of the UN Secretary-General in all the UN governing structures, agencies and programmes. In that context, activities of the Department of the General Assembly and Conference Management at the UN headquarters in New York, and the UN offices in Geneva, Switzerland, are also entrusted to him.

The conference has also secured Dr Naledi Pandor (left), former Minister in the Departments of Science and Technology (DST), Higher Education and Training (DHET) and recently the International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO). She will address the gathering on The University, its Future and Academic Freedom.

Having previously held both ministerial portfolios of Education, Science and Technology and Higher Education and Training, respectively, and with solid grounding in academia – where she held senior lecturer positions at the University of Bophuthatswana and at the University of Cape Town for close to a decade leading up to 1994, Dr Pandor is well versed in higher education issues.

Also lined up to speak on Framing the Future of the University and the Future Making University – Sustainable Development Goals is Professor Tel Amiel (right), the adjunct professor at the School of Education at the University of Brasília in Brazil, where he is the UNESCO Chair in Distance Education and editor-in-chief of the open access journal, Linhas Críticas. He has held various visiting fellow/professor/researcher/ positions at universities in the United States, and he currently teaches master’s in leadership in Open Education at the University of Nova Gorica (Slovenia) and is part of the Advisory Board of the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation/ IGF Dynamic Coalition for the Open Education Resource (OER) and of the Open Education for a Better World Programme.

South Africa’s own Professor Ulrich Paquet (left), who is the Director at the African Institute for Mathematical Science (AIMS) South Africa and the UNESCO Chair in Distance Education, is also set to address the conference on Technology and the Human Interface in the Future University. This scholar is described as a South African artificial intelligence and machine learning expert with over 20 years’ experience and holds a dual position as a Research Scientist at Deepmind, the world’s leading centre for research in artificial intelligence.

Having previously worked at several tech companies including Microsoft, where he co-developed several technologies, Professor Paquet went on to co-found “The Deep Learning Indaba,” an organisation whose mission is to strengthen machine learning and artificial intelligence in Africa. He has been part of the organisation’s events organised in 33 countries on the African continent. The AIMS Director holds a PhD in Machine Learning from the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory.