Building on South African ties
Campus Review
Tuesday 17th Jan, 2012

An international public policy congress will engage academic delegates from South Africa and Australia alongside government and industry representatives in developing research proposals on issues related to national productivity.

The congress is the second of its type held in Cape Town by Australian public policy think tank the Eidos Institute, reflecting growing links between the Australian and South African higher education systems. The South African National Development Plan (Vision 2030) places the creation of an expanding higher education sector that is able to “contribute to rising incomes, higher productivity and a shift to a more knowledge intensive economy” as central to the nation’s developmental aims.

Eidos Institute CEO Bruce Muirhead said the congress reflected the aim of the Eidos Institute and its university members to act as a bridge for policymakers, academics and industry representatives to access and better interpret knowledge existing in public policy research across the globe. “In both South Africa and Australia, the complexity of public policy issues has significantly grown,” he said.

“Approaching these issues from a cross-national perspective, where open dialogue is facilitated between leading academics, policy-makers and government officials from both countries, is an important step in finding answers to some of our shared problems.”

Workforce participation and productivity on both sides of the Indian Ocean represents a key area for government and industry alike. In South Africa, a mismatch in the supply and demand of skills in the labour market is causing a barrier to the nation’s social and economic development. In Australia, workforce participation is improving but productivity has been described as “stagnant”.

The South African university sector has most recently been in the news following a stampede which broke out at among students waiting to enrol at the University of Johannesburg, which killed the mother of a prospective female student and left dozens more injured.

The South African government has pledged to expand access to universities and colleges as part of a drive to counter youth unemployment and address skills shortages in Africa’s largest economy. The government is struggling to extend education opportunities once reserved solely for whites.

Working group areas for discussion at the 2012 Eidos Institute Public Policy Congress include ICT and digital inclusion, learning futures, systems to address community violence and national health. The congress runs for two days, beginning the evening of February 8 and finishing February 10.

As an Eidos Institute member, the University of Pretoria leads a consortium of South African Universities involved in the congress, including the University of the Western Cape and Durban University of Technology. Leading academics will join a number of Australian university delegates at the congress, which will also feature keynote addresses from University of Pretoria vice-chancellor Professor Cheryl de la Rey, Eidos Institute’s Bruce Muirhead and Australian High Commissioner to South Africa Ann Harrap.

The increasing relevance and role of think tanks as umbrella institutions under which experts and leaders from different backgrounds and disciplines can develop and discuss policy related ideas, values and strategies is emerging as an innovative feature on the global higher education landscape. As an organisation free of ideology and government influence, Eidos is one of a number of progressive Australian groups increasingly translating academic scholarship and applying it to push boundaries and test new solutions to public policy issues.

Samantha Dean Director of Communications at the Eidos Institute. More information on the congress can be found at www.eidos.org.au