A year-long capacity-development journey funded through the DAAD-DIES National Multiplication Trainings programme has culminated in a powerful call for South African universities to rethink internationalisation as an institution-wide responsibility, one that must extend far beyond the international office.
Last year, Mangosuthu University of Technology (MUT) and Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University (SMU) jointly secured the competitive grant to deliver “Building Bridges: Developing Internationalisation Skills for Professional Staff in Universities,” a programme designed to equip 20 university professional and support-services staff with the knowledge and practical skills required to contribute meaningfully to internationalisation.
The MUT–SMU proposal was the only South African project selected in its funding circle, and one of seven successful projects from Africa. The programme forms part of the Dialogue on Innovative Higher Education Strategies (DIES) National Multiplication Trainings (NMT) initiative, jointly initiated by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK), with funding from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The NMT programme is coordinated by the Centre for Quality Development at the University of Potsdam.
The year-long programme combined intensive training with institution-based change projects, requiring participants to move beyond learning about internationalisation to identifying challenges within their own universities and developing practical responses.
Its final training leg brought the journey full circle, with MUT and SMU contributing extensively to conversations on how universities can build greater awareness, ownership and coordination of internationalisation across their institutions.