Lupane to hold education expo

Thobekile Khumalo/Sindisiwe Sibanda, Sunday News Reporters

THE Lupane State University is going to host a conference in conjunction with the University of Free State of South Africa aimed at bringing together educators’ research outputs in relation to the rural education environment.

The conference will be held at the university’s main campus in Lupane from Tuesday to Friday.

In an interview, Lupane State University director of marketing and communication Mr Zwelithini Dhlamini said the conference will focus on education in the rural environment.

“As a university we are trying to focus on the rural education system in order to understand what is happening and possibly bring up ways of assisting children and teachers working in that environment because the rural environment has its own peculiar challenges,” he said.

Mr Dhlamini said the university expects to benefit from interacting with the University of Free State.

“There is some better practice in South Africa in terms of development that we can copy as Zimbabwe and also having them learn from us because our education is quite reputable so by sharing ideas and experiences we are hoping that we should be able to improve the learning environment for both the learners and the educators,” he said.

“We chose the University of Free State because they have a unit that also has an interest in the area of rural education environment but in the context of South Africa which is similar to ours. Also hosting a fellow sister institution of high reputation as the University of Free State will raise awareness about the existence of our university and improve the profile of the university,” he said.

Meanwhile, the university has launched a programme aimed at enhancing and nurturing photographers in practice to improve their craft and business skills.

“We partnered through the co-ordination of our lecturers Dr Nkululeko Sibanda who is co-ordinating the training, taking as well our ICT specialists and students in Film and TV so that they also benefit in this training. Our aim is to capacitate photographers to catch up with the modern trend in the area of photography. This training will enable photographers to realise their weaknesses and strengths as tasks will be given for them to balance their work as this training targets the already practising photographers,” said Mr Dhlamini.