Delegates attending the 4th Leadership and Management in Projects-driven Industries in South Africa (LAMIPISA 2016) Conference were urged to not only diagnose the challenges facing the continent but also devise strategies to fix them.

The three-day LAMIPISA Conference, which was held recently on the Cape Town Campus, was organised by CPUT’s Department of Management and Project Management.

More than 70 papers were submitted to the conference whose theme was “Modelling Africa out of chronic poverty” and delegates from universities in the Slovac Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa attended the conference.

Prof Louis Fourie, DVC: Knowledge and Information Technology Services, challenged the delegates to move away from conferences that do not discuss the destiny of the continent.

“As we continue to meet year after year, our hope is that you should be able to start talking more openly about the future of the continent as academics,” said Fourie.

Willem Lotter, Acting Dean: Faculty of Business and Management Sciences, said getting the basics right is essential to build and strengthen capability and trust in order to achieve good governance and pride.

“I trust that the 70+ papers will not only diagnose the problem but also find a way to fix it, given liberty, high moral standing, political will and stability, so that we at LAMIPISA may combine to provide a Development Model incorporating the young, old, weak, needy and provide for our many African students the knowledge, guidance and insight to apply their education and create equal opportunities,” added Lotter.

Angela Buys, HoD: Management and Project Management, encouraged deliberations and research presentations that contribute towards, among others, models of aggressive but reasonable interventions, based on chronic poverty literature, to determine the possibility of increasing chronic poverty reduction.

Written by Kwanele Butana
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Delegates attending a conference which interrogated models to end poverty on the continent were so inspired they decided to launch a bank. 

As a result of the theme of this year’s LAMIPISA Conference, “Modelling Africa out of Chronic Poverty”, the organisers have made use of South African legislation and her people’s culture of using stokvels as a savings vehicle to launch the LAMIPISA Cooperative Banking project.

To launch the bank, the law requires a minimum of 200 members with a common bond to raise R1million amongst themselves.

According to Irshaad Desai, one of the conference’s organisers and a lecturer in the Department of Management and Project Management, 60 delegates joined the bank during the conference, followed by a further 20 people afterwards.

“Collectively, these roughly 80 people represent roughly 300 people,” said Desai.

He added that members of the public who intend to join the bank may register their interest on this link and they will be invited to the bank’s next information session.

This year’s LAMIPISA Conference was held on the District Six campus during September. It was attended by delegates from Africa and Palestine who presented their research papers and received valuable feedback from the attentive audience.

Written by Kwanele Butana
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.