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Diane Holt Attends Workshops in South Africa

Category
Centre for Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Studies
Enterprise Education
Date
Professor Diane Holt and colleagues in South Africa
From left to right Coletta (Pretoria), Chewe (Zambia), Innocensia (Dar Es Salam) and Professor Diane Holt (Leeds)
Professor Diane Holt is visiting South Africa this month to attend, and contribute to, two groundbreaking workshop programmes in association with partner universities of Pretoria and Cape Town.

In Pretoria she is attending the three-day stakeholder engagement workshop for the FSNet-Africa programme (https://fsnetafrica.com/). The three lead partners in the project are the University of Pretoria, the University of Leeds, and FANRPAN (The Pan-African Food, Agriculture, and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network). In addition to the lead partners, FSNet-Africa has ten academic partners and five FANRPAN multi-sectoral in-country node partners working across six African countries. The overarching aim of this two-year programme is to strengthen researchers' capacities to conduct food systems research and translate evidence into implementable policy solutions and practical interventions to support the SDG targets for Africa. FSNet-Africa is a research excellence project funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) under the partnership between the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA). Diane is one of the Leeds mentors in the programme assigned to a research team with partner academics from Tanzania, Zambia and South Africa. Her research fellow has undertaken fascinating work on the role of indigenous (orphan) crops in household food security through a focus on their value chains.

Then, Diane will be attending the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business where she will attend the inaugural meeting of a research project network focused on social innovation and sustainable development. This is funded through and awarded to the partner universities from the World University Network Global Higher Education and Research (GHEAR) network. This project is led by the Universities of Cape Town and Sheffield, with additional network partners from York, Leeds, Makerere, Pretoria and Ghana. More details on this project can be found at (https://cees.leeds.ac.uk/news/new-project-african-universities-as-enablers-of-social-innovation-and-sustainable-development/) . Diane has a long-standing relationship with colleagues at the University of Cape Town and she will also take this opportunity work to with her research partners on exploring data they have collected on the lived experience of informal economy entrepreneurs in South Africa.