Human Sciences Research Council
Pretoria, Tuesday 8 March 2017 – Scores of young graduates and scholars from different African countries and the diaspora will converge at Birchwood Hotel and Conference centre for the 11th annual Africa Young Graduates and Scholars Conference (AYGS) to take place from 13 to 14 March 2017. The AYGS is jointly organised by the Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA) programme of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in partnership with the historic, University of Fort Hare.
The electrifying, yet challenging symposium to be held under the theme Re-imagining Leadership and Gender for Sustainable Development is intended to be a discussion forum and a networking place for advanced students, academics and research, policy, practice and business communities to contribute towards solving Africa’s most pressing development challenges at the local, national and regional levels.
The conference delegates will focus their discussion on the following three pillars:
• Pillar 1: Youth, higher education and social change.
• Pillar 2: Socially inclusive economic growth.
• Pillar 3: Disaster, resiliency and adaptation.
Deliberations focusing on structural elements shaping community relations (and their gender dimensions) including local dynamics of re-appropriation and agency appropriate for the realisation of the vision of Agenda 2063 take centre stage at this conference.
Since its inception in 2005, the annual AYGS conference has been a research capacity-building project with the aim of building a body of knowledge and to project the African ‘voice’ in various discourses about the continent. It is further intended to bridge the existing gap of expertise in knowledge production on African affairs by developing a society of knowledge producers among the emerging scholars.
Media is invited to attend as follows:
Date : 13 – 14 March 2017
Time : 08:00 – 18:00
Venue : Birchwood Hotel and Conference Centre, Boksburg, South Africa
Notes to the Editor
About the HSRC
The HSRC was established in 1968 as South Africa’s statutory research agency and has grown to become the largest dedicated research institute in the social sciences and humanities on the African continent, doing cutting-edge public research in areas that are crucial to development.
Our mandate is to inform the effective formulation and monitoring of government policy; to evaluate policy implementation; to stimulate public debate through the effective dissemination of research-based data and fact-based research results; to foster research collaboration; and to help build research capacity and infrastructure for the human sciences.
The Council conducts large-scale, policy-relevant, social-scientific research for public sector users, non-governmental organisations and international development agencies. Research activities and structures are closely aligned with South Africa’s national development priorities.
About the Africa Institute
AISA in the HSRC undertakes basic, applied and comparative research devoted to the study of Africa and African Diasporas. Additionally, the Centre collaborates with and provides research-based policy advice to African multilateral organisations on public affairs.
The work of the Institute makes a contribution to addressing the many dimensions of the study of Africa in Africa and reversing the marginality, in global terms, of knowledge production in Africa.
For the next few years AISA will focus on good governance in Africa; the sustainable development agenda, including AU 2063; and human security on the continent. Africa’s future and her place in the world will be central to the research AISA undertakes.
The AISA website can still be accessed at: http://www.ai.org.za/
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For more information or to set up interviews, please contact:
Adziliwi Nematandani
Mobile: 0827659191
email: anematandani@hsrc.ac.za