Promoting networking and scholarship in African region

The two-day conference is a joint initiative of the OU and the University of KwaZulu-Natal to serve as a platform for the development of leadership, capacity and scholarship in the African Region. Participating members are from Mauritius, South Africa, Angola, Namibia, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

In his address, Mr Vyapoory said that the conference will spearhead educational cooperation and set the pace for a sustained research agenda that will benefit the African continent. He stressed that research should be the heartbeat of any university and spoke of the significant importance of research in universities. In the wake of a challenging digital world universities should promote digital learning as well as explore means of high quality education for the citizens, he said. The ultimate beneficiaries will indeed be the society, at large, he added.  

Speaking on the conference, he said that it will  bring academics and non-academics to conduct research together so as to make research more impactful. He also called for collaboration among different partner countries so as to produce sufficient amount of resources and high quality research and research funding on the international front.

For his part, the Chairperson of OU, Mr R. Duva Pentiah, said that the second edition of the e-MIG conference follows the success of the previous one held in 2017 in Mauritius. The e-world, he said, is prone to challenges and various transformations and added that it is imperative that innovative and best practices are identified through the universality of education. The conference will thus provide an international platform bringing together academics and researchers from a range of disciplines to share expertise and knowledge in different fields which are e-driven, he added.