Norway
27 August 2007
The Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor MP, today concluded her visit to
Norway. She was in Norway at the invitation of her Norwegian counterpart,
Minister Oystein Djupedal. She attended various events at the University of
Oslo in celebration of 'A Decade of Academic Partnership between South Africa
and Norway.' The celebrations were organised by the University of Oslo in
co-operation with the Embassy of South Africa to Norway.
In opening the celebrations, the Minister said: "The Norwegian support for
education in South Africa began with the provision of bursaries for students
who were in exile during apartheid. In the early 1990s Norway continued to fund
and support South Africa's national democratic and policy development process.
In particular, your support on higher-education, policy development was
invaluable. In fact, the history of our education policy development was
fundamentally shaped by Norwegian support. Overall, we would like to express
our gratitude and special appreciation to the people of Norway for their
sustained support of our efforts towards building a just, equitable and
democratic society."
Editor's notes:
* The South Africa�Norway Programme on Research Co-operation, co-ordinated
by the National Research Foundation (NRF) on behalf of the Department of
Science and Technology (DST) and the Department of Education (DoE), and the
Research Council of Norway, represents the most important institutional
mechanism for research cooperation between South Africa and Norway.
* Phase two of this programme, which is currently underway, involves more
than twenty-five collaborative research projects between Norwegian and South
African institutions.
* The South Africa-Norway Tertiary Education Development (SANTED) Programme
includes a multilingualism project at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The
project promotes multilingual proficiency for academic staff and students
registered in service disciplines such as Social Work, Law, Nursery, Medicine
and the health sciences.
* South Africa-Norway Tertiary Education Development Programme (Santed) also
provided a contribution of R700 000 towards the establishment and launch of the
newly formed South African Union of Students (Saus).
Contact:
Lunga Ngqengelele
Ministerial Spokesperson
Tel: 012 312 5538
Cell: 082 566 0446
E-mail: ngqengelele.l@doe.gov.za
Issued by: Ministry of Education
27 August 2007
