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/ 29 January 2007
At the heart of improving quality in education is the imperative of deepening the quality and confidence of the teacher corps. But we must also have an adequate supply of well-trained teachers who are committed to reversing the perilous state of quality in our schools.
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/ 29 January 2007
There is an edgy anxiousness to the bond warehouses storing imported second-hand cars from Asia that have sprung up in the area surrounding Durban’s harbour: burly guards, sometimes armed, watch the entrance points; wire perimeter fencing ensures (foreign) passports have to be produced before access is gained.
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/ 29 January 2007
On August 2 last year, the University of KwaZulu-Natal passed its language policy and plan through the university senate. The policy advocates additive bilingualism in English and isiZulu, and supports multilingualism more broadly with respect to Afrikaans, the Indian heritage languages, and languages of strategic importance in Africa and globally.
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/ 29 January 2007
A small group of scientists led by Dr Michelle van der Bank of the botany and biotechnology department at the University of Johannesburg has launched an ambitious project to collect all the plants of the Kruger National Park and use DNA sequencing and barcoding techniques to study this rich flora.
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/ 29 January 2007
The UCT Graduate School of Business is launching a landmark programme to address a key skills shortage in middle to senior management in the South African business-process outsourcing and call-centre industry. The skills shortage has been identified in recent research studies on the local industry.
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/ 29 January 2007
The world came to Nairobi, capital of Kenya, this week to talk — and shout — about how to achieve a better world. Delegates attended the World Social Forum (WSF) in their thousands to discuss topics as diverse as poverty, land redistribution, women’s issues, water affairs, government impunity and human rights abuses.
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/ 29 January 2007
This week, the skiers move out of Davos, leaving the top hotels to the rich and famous invited to the annual bash organised by the World Economic Forum. Davos is synonymous with globalisation and has security to keep out those who believe that the setting 1Â 500m up in the Swiss Alps is perfect for the conclave of Dr Evils intent on dominating the world.
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/ 29 January 2007
Eskom is de-mothballing old stations, rolling out new capacity and achieving vast energy savings, but with such run-down and stretched power resources, there will be little wiggle room in electricity provision for a long time to come. Recent outages saw Eskom lose 25% of the power on the national grid in the peak of summer.
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/ 29 January 2007
Size matters. Race matters. It’s sad, after all these years, to have to admit it, but it’s true. The size part refers to those who hold the bigger stick — in this case the famous international organisation called the United Nations, which, in turn, bows to an even bigger stick wielded by a big country called the United States.
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/ 29 January 2007
Europeans love chicken breast. That leaves the question — what do you do with the legs? The current answer is to freeze them and ship them to Africa, where they sell at a price far cheaper than fresh local chicken. Television journalist Marcello Faraggi has put this chicken-and-Africa story in a documentary shown at the European Parliament in Brussels.