An academic in the Faculty of Business and Management Sciences will be teaming up with European universities in research collaboration projects for which funding will be solicited from the European Union (EU).

Dr Michael Twum-Darko has recently returned from Slovakia where he formed the partnerships during the 4th International Week of Erasmus+ Teaching Staff Mobility at the University of Economics in Bratislava (UEB).

Twum-Darko says the event saw him building rapport with teaching staff from UEB and other European universities in order to strengthen international networks and exchange ideas.

“The participation is also for CPUT to meet the objective of supporting the staff mobility as part of its modernisation and internationalisation strategy, and to recognise it as a component in any evaluation or assessment of the teaching staff member.”

He will embark on collaborative research projects with the UEB and Niccolò Cusano University, Rome.

The projects include research on e-Leadership and e-Readiness in the public sectors of South Africa and Slovakia.

“A conceptual paper will soon be published as well as data collection in Bratislava City for comparative research.”

Sustainable Energy and Women Empowerment are some of the issues that will be explored. Twum-Darko adds that these issues require a substantial consortium to deliver outcomes aligned to the EU’s Sustainable Development Goals.

He says that at the event he shared his experience with his European counterparts and received knowledge that is likely to impact the research and collaboration agenda of his faculty and CPUT.

“I hope this will be a source of inspiration to other staff members.”

Written by Kwanele Butana
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The Bank Sector Education and Training Authority (BankSETA) has awarded R1.19 million to the Graduate Centre for Management’s Business Incubation and Innovation Centre (BIIC) as a research partner to conduct cutting-edge research.

Lecturer Judith Smith said the Centre’s partnership with the SETA will run up to March 2023 and that the former will conduct research on skills analysis of FinTechs and how they bridge skills gaps in the banking and alternative banking sectors and strengthen synergies between the banking sector and FinTechs.

Smith added that the other area of research is how skills development contributes to the transformation of the banking and alternative banking sectors. “How can the SETA expand access to post-schooling education and training to help transform the banking and alternative banking sector,” she elaborated.

She described the BIIC as an academic incubator to actualise the vision of smartness propagated by Vice-Chancellor, Prof Chris Nhlapo, as a measure that sets CPUT apart from our counterparts, and that it told the story of how CPUT is grappling with the phenomenal opportunities presented by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Dr Michael Twum-Darko, Head of BIIC and the Acting Head of Graduate Centre for Management, said the competency that was established to re-curriculate the Diploma in Banking, PGDip in Digital Business, Bachelor of Business Informatics and Doctor of Business Informatics programmes would be used to conduct the research for the SETA. Twum-Darko encouraged interested researchers to contact him if they want to participate in the research.      

The Centre has been identified by Caring4Hope, a Non-Profit Organisation, as one of the incubators in South Africa to turn young South Africans into entrepreneurs. “The Next Big Thing” is a project initiated by Caring4Hope to develop 2 000 South African youth in a year to become job creators for the next three years at an annual cost of R15 million.

The scope of the three-year agreement is for the BIIC to provide theoretical training for entrepreneurial skills development in the form of online coaching and mentoring of selected youth across the country.

Twum-Darko said the contract stipulated that a team of facilitators and assessors meet on a regular basis with the Project’s Coordinator to monitor all aspects of the progress of the students and submit reports to Caring4Hope when available.

Furthermore, Caring4Hope will be responsible for the management of the programme, record- keeping of assessments and forwarding of records and necessary correspondence to all stakeholders including the financial partners.

Written by Kwanele Butana

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On Thursday CPUT launched a project that seeks to tackle the country’s unemployment problem head on.

“The Next Big Thing” is a project initiated by Caring4Hope, a Non-Profit Organisation (NPO), to develop 2 000 South African young entrepreneurs a year for the next three years at a cost of R15 million per annum.

The Graduate Centre for Management’s Business Incubation and Innovation Centre (BIIC) was identified by Caring4Hope as one of the incubators to partner with it.

The BIIC as an academic incubator to actualise the vision of smartness conceived by Vice-Chancellor, Prof Chris Nhlapo, as a measure which sets CPUT apart from our counterparts, and tells the story of how the university is grappling with the phenomenal opportunities presented by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The scope of the three-year collaborative agreement between CPUT and the NPO is for the BIIC to provide theoretical training for entrepreneurial skills development in the form of online coaching and mentoring of selected youth across the country.

During the launch Dr Michael Twum-Darko, Head of BIIC and the Acting Head of the Graduate Centre for Management, said that in order to remain relevant and enable emerging thinkers to pursue surer pathways to success, the BIIC introduces a campus space where students can connect to fellow entrepreneurs and interested financiers.

Darko added that academic incubators are distinct academic ecosystems with inquisitive entrepreneurs and that postgraduate students seeking connections to the marketplace can use the BIIC to create enterprises or to become employable.

He cited several innovative projects under his supervision that are being undertaken by postgraduate students in the BIIC such as the Application of Machine Learning in managing diseases in pig farming and the Application of big data analytics to improve students’ performance, among others

The fully-fledged centre on the 4th Floor in the Engineering Building state of the art equipment to the value of R426 460.

Prof Judy Peter, Director: Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships, said Universities of Technology have a responsibility to respond to the vocational demands of a market-driven economy and that they continue to add value to the notion of redress in “post-colonial and # fees must fall era”.

Peter added that The Next Best Thing project promises to ensure successful start-ups, products, and business opportunities that reflect the underlying principles of CPUT’s Vision 2030 to establish SMART universities.

Rodrigue Mounguengui, CEO and Founder of “The Next Big Thing” said that to deliver on the aspirations of the project Caring4Hope had teamed up with CPUT, Google and The Barleader TV.

“It’s not about the size of your pocket but the size of your mind,” added Mounguengui.

The CPUT alumnus said Google’s role of creating business profiles for the selected entrepreneurs for free was crucial and that the TV production company will produce reality shows about entrepreneurship to inspire communities.

Mounguengui, who completed a Masters in Business Administration degree at Stellenbosch University in 2020, said that the project will organise a Business Summit where industry captains from the public and private sectors as well as academic and commercial institutions will be invited to discuss why the billions of rand which were poured onto South Africa’s small businesses for decades have not yielded jobs.  

Prof Renitha Rampersad, Assistant Dean: Research and Innovation in the Faculty of Business and Management Sciences, said the project augurs well with the Faculty’s research trajectory and congratulated Darko for his foresight.

Written by Kwanele Butana
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In order to thrive in this era of ever-changing digital technology, business organisations require leaders who are independent thinkers, self-confident, innovative, creative and results-oriented.  

This kind of phenomenon is termed e-leadership.

This view was shared by Dr Michael Twum-Darko, Academic Head of Postgraduate Research at the Graduate Centre for Management, during the Digital Transformation Talk hosted recently by the CPUT-based Centre for Enterprise Resource Planning in Africa (CERPiA).

Dr Twum-Darko said that in addition to e-leadership technical infrastructure and enterprise architecture were also required.

He added that people need to appreciate that, while business content has not changed over the last couple of years, the context of doing business has evolved. He argued that digital technology and the internet of things are now being used to integrate business process and office automation with industrial processes and factory automation and that this is a convergence towards the establishment of cyber-production systems.

CERPiA manager Jerry Ansen said the Centre trains academics from Africa to train others in the SAP software programme. “Our task is to reach out to African universities so that they can skill and train their students.”

The Centre has since 2012 trained more than 6 000 graduates, 575 lecturers and professors in Africa.

Students in the Human Resources Management Department who recently completed the SAP training were awarded certificates during the event. Ansen added that the graduates, who were nominated to participate in the training by their department, all obtained distinctions during the assessment.

Aqeela Dawood, one of the graduates, said the SAP certificate has opened many doors in industry for them as they have been equipped to handle all the business processes pertaining to HR management.

Advancement director Calvin Maseko thanked Investec for funding the training of the graduates.

Written by Kwanele Butana
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