SASUF UNIZULU Edutainment Festival

The University of Zululand (UNIZULU) will be hosting a first-of-its-kind edutainment festival on Sunday, 5 May at its King Bhekuzulu Hall in the KwaDlangezwa Campus.

The event will afford emerging entrepreneurs, in and around the KwaDlangezwa area, who are involved in agriculture, arts and crafts as well as hospitality among other fields, an opportunity to showcase their products to a diverse audience.

The proceedings of the festival will take place in three sessions, an opening ceremony which entails the launching and exhibition of emerging enterprises, interactive demonstrations and presentations on indigenous food and a prize giving segment where the best three winning business pitches will be announced.

Professor Unathi Kolanisi, the Acting Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Science and Agriculture who is a member of the organising team of the festival, said: “The purpose of the event is to promote social cohesion and working towards achieving social justice; preserve indigenous-based economic systems; give communities an opportunity to establish networks and create partnerships as well as to sensitise society about economic transformation.”

She explained that the festival will be hosted as a build up to a major international seminar of the South Africa-Sweden University Forum (SASUF), a four-year strategic internationalisation project which UNIZULU is involved in. SASUF began in 2018 and will run until 2020. Its overall objective is strengthening ties between Sweden and South Africa in research, education and innovation. The forum is a collaboration between 36 universities in Sweden and South Africa, together with embassies, civil society organisations, funding agencies and ministries in both countries.

The SASUF Research and Innovation Week 2019 will begin on Monday, 6 May and end on Friday, 10 May. Many satellite events will be hosted by SASUF members around South Africa on the first two days of the week, as a build up to the main Research and Innovation Seminar taking place at Stellenbosch University from 8 to 10 May.

Apart from the festival, SASUF UNIZULU will host a colloquium on 6 May at the university’s Science Centre in Richards Bay. The conference is intended to create dialogues between various stakeholders such as academics, government departments, research institutes, industry and others involved in community development.

For more information, please contact Prof Kolanisi on KolanisiU@unizulu.ac.za.