UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN

The University of Cape Town (UCT) remains Africa’s foremost academic institution. In 2018, the university leapt up 36 places (from 259^th in 2017) to 223^rd in the world, according to the latest report from the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR). A total of 18 000 institutions were assessed, making CWUR the largest academic ranking of global universities. Invest Cape Town sat down with UCT’s new Vice-Chancellor Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng to discuss the university’s success, her Twitter fans and her vision for UCT.

Why should students choose to study at UCT?

With all our complexity and challenges, we remain the top university on the continent. We are in the Top 10 in the world for development studies and area studies. These are studies that focus on where we live, on Africa. If you want expertise on development in Africa, UCT is the place to be. Our Faculty of Health Sciences ranks among the Top 60 in the world. If you look at the bulk of our research, we do research that affect the most poor – research on Malaria, TB, HIV and heart disease that affect the poor. Students from the continent should come here because we do relevant world-class scholarship. So it’s at world-class level, but explores questions that are of relevance to the continent. If they come here, they will be taught by some of the best scholars in the field. They will be positioned to be with the best in the world, even though their work is focused on problems of the continent. I can’t see a better institution to be at on the continent.

You took the baton from Dr Max Price on 1 July 2018. What is your vision for the institution?

I’ve entitled it Securing a Sustainable Future for UCT. I argue that sustainability should be at the core , it should lead everything we do. The sustainability of the institution should not only be about its finances or climate change or whatever, it’s more about the ecology of the institution, the culture of the institution – what the institution does to the people: the students, the staff and what the institution produces. We cannot achieve that kind of sustainability if we do not drive excellence and transformation. Transformation being at the core. I’m arguing that excellence should remain non-negotiable. But excellence on its own without transformation is not sustainable. And even though transformation is key, we have to drive it with a focus on excellence. Because if we don’t, then there would be no integrity in that transformation. In my view transformation is not just about bringing people into the space, or just bringing black people simply because they are black. You bring them because they bring a capability. That’s why excellence is at the centre of that. Transformation and excellence are not in opposition, actually they work together. Transformation will make our excellence sustainable and excellence will make sure that our transformation has got integrity. So the three pillars of my vision are: excellence, transformation and sustainability, where transformation and excellence work together to ensure the sustainability of our institution.

What does this mean in practice?

In terms of initiatives, we are taking a future-focused approach. The future-focused approach has three aspects to it:

I’m focusing on Future Leaders: recognising and developing future leaders. It’s a focus that recognises the fact that in a world-class academic institution such as ours, leadership is not just about administration. Leadership is about research, it’s academic leadership, and it’s also about administration. We are going to build different kinds of leadership, proactively so. We also have a group of Young Leading Scholars, people who will be leading scholars by 2030. We have an initiative that focuses on them, tailor-made programmes which also looks at retaining them. We are going to create an enabling environment for them to succeed.

The second programme that we are looking at is Future Scholarship. With Future Scholarship we are asking the question: The world is changing, are we? The world is changing as a result of technological advancements, the 4^th Industrial Revolution is here – basically the ground is shifting beneath our feet. It is possible that in 20 years from now, universities will look very different. And what universities do might not be what they do now, simply because the world would have changed so much. So we are asking: what is the future of higher education and what does it mean for us as a leading university? What does it mean for us in terms of how we do business given the technological advancement? Is the way we do what we do changing? Should we be thinking about how we use drones and robots in our environment to enable what we do? As a leading university we don’t want to be caught napping, we want to lead to help our country and our continent leapfrog into the future. We are starting a think-tank in that regard, they will be working at future scholarship, considering different challenges, what kind of graduates should we be producing, how should we be doing our work, basically the future.

The last set of programmes focus on Inclusive Futures. Inclusive Futures also draws on the idea of the world is changing. It is about being responsive and being creative in this rapidly changing world of ours. We are introducing programmes that are about inclusivity. The first gamut of programmes focus on the poor – there we are starting three centres of excellence: one on poverty-related diseases, the second on inequality, the third on climate and development. These three centres of excellence focuses on different things, but different things that affect the poor. Climate change affects the poor much worse than it affects the wealthy. If we want a future for our world, we cannot have a future that ignores the poor.

Who or what inspires you?

I’m inspired by young people. There was a time my mother was my sole inspiration, but I think I am inspired by young people who come from desperate environments and they achieve unimaginable success against the odds. We’ve got lots of them at this university who generally wouldn’t have made it, but they make it. You give them an opportunity and they run with it. And you can see this kid is going to be the first graduate in their home… man they are doing it in a big way. I’ve just had dinner with one of our students who comes from Gugulethu. His dad passed away, he is now going to start a PhD programme at Cambridge. Not only is he the first graduate in the family, he is also going to be the first doctorate in the family. In my assessment he is going to be one of the top scholars in his field. I just get goose-bumps thinking about this. You see a lot of young people who come from humble beginnings in the Eastern Cape, started their undergrad at Walter Sisulu University (WSU) after getting shabby matric results. They go to WSU, get degree and honours and starts Masters here and they fly. I get so excited. I feel like going to WSU to tell those students to keep going. It doesn’t matter where you started, it matters where you go and where you end. I’m inspired by those kinds of stories. I sincerely believe that universities change people’s lives. Education changes people’s lives. People who come from nothing become something huge, something their parents never thought, something they never thought. It is a space that says you can be anything you want. Many young people are grabbing it.

You are very active on social media and very popular with millennials. What do you enjoy most about engaging with young people on social media?

It’s these stories. Just bumping into this energy of young people who just get in and do it. You don’t get it anywhere else. Some of them I can inbox for a meeting. It gives you an opportunity to meet these young bright people, who are ambitious, who want to do things that sometimes look outrageous. I like the dreamy, the gutsy, the exuberant stuff young people want to do. I enjoy that kind of space, where young people push boundaries. The thing social media does well is, it connect me to young people all over – whether they are UCT students are not, I can encourage them. I can have that influence on them that is positive, I can point them to opportunities that they are not aware of. It connects me to different students from different places that I would not have been able to do without social media. It is a very powerful tool.

What do you enjoy about living and working in Cape Town?

The amazing thing about Cape Town, that I wouldn’t get in Gauteng, is the hikes. My husband and I love hiking. Working at UCT is incredible. It’s because of the student body, which is vibrant and very different to other institutions in the country.

Watch Professor Phakeng’s welcome message to students here.