Digitalization-Kick-off: New Digital Infrastructure for the Network of the DAAD Centres of Excellence

On March 3-6, 2020 the Kick-off Meeting of the new digitalization project DigiFace took place at Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth. DigiFace – short for “Digital Initiative for African Centres of Excellence” – is a new project funded by DAAD that aims at supporting and facilitating higher education learning and research at all DAAD African Centres of Excellence. DigiFace is setting-up tools and facilities for digital learning and knowledge exchange with the help of a central interactive digital platform. The project is going to strengthen the Centres’ digital learning, teaching and research competencies as well as the networking among all the Centres – between all institutions involved, between staff, students, and alumni.

More information on the project can be found here on the Website!

The Kick-off meeting was the official starting-point of the new project. Delegates from all the currently 10 Centres as well as from the Centres’ Alumni Network gathered in order to exchange on the current statuses of digital infrastructure, the needs and expectations with regard to such an all comprising new digital network, the opportunities and challenges for its implementation as well as on the next steps to go.

The SA-GER CDR was represented by Lance Scheepers (Information Systems ISD), Enayat Hamza (Programme Manager: Training and Consultancy at the SoG), and Ruth Knoblich (DAAD Lecturer in Development Research at the SA-GER CDR).