HE experts head abroad on curriculum co-creation journey
SOUTHERN AFRICA-IRELAND
Academics and government officials from South Africa, Namibia, Eswatini and Lesotho will be travelling to visit Trinity College Dublin, Ireland’s oldest university and a global leader in innovation as well as entrepreneurship education and scholarship.
The four-day immersive visit, between 16 and 19 December 2025, forms part of the University-Industry Co-creation (UNIICo-create) project that focuses on the pressing challenges of low job creation, limited start-up success, and graduate unemployment in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC).
The project was launched in December 2024 and is funded by the Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education Programme, seeking to modernise entrepreneurship education across Southern Africa by embedding university-industry collaboration into curricula.
The SADC delegation will engage directly with academics, students and industry partners at Trinity College and are expected to gain insights into Trinity’s best practices, and how they can benefit institutions in the SADC – in particular, practices related to strengthening students’ entrepreneurial mindsets and the fostering of partnerships with industry and government.
Professor Muhammad Nakhooda, a biotechnology teaching and learning coordinator in the faculty of applied sciences at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), said he is looking forward to understanding how technology transfer and intellectual property (IP) management tools are integrated into entrepreneurship training, and Trinity College has managed to grow and sustain a coherent innovation ecosystem.
“The key for me is identifying governance features – like streamlined partnerships and unified entry points – that can be adapted to strengthen entrepreneurship structures within CPUT and the broader SADC context,” he added.
According to John Whelan, technology case manager, knowledge exchange, at Trinity College, a successful visit and project would mean African universities leaving with practical tools: new entrepreneurship modules, co-creation spaces that connect students with industry, and a network of leaders who continue collaborating. Ultimately, he said, it will be reflected in more work-ready graduates, more start-ups, and universities playing a stronger role in economic development, just as had happened in Ireland.
A project aiming to bring about lasting change
The UNIICO-create initiative was launched to devise a curriculum strategy to embed entrepreneurship education in universities across the SADC.
The project is a collaboration involving CPUT, the University of Venda and Stellenbosch University in South Africa; the National University of Lesotho and Lerotholi Polytechnic in Lesotho; the University of Namibia, the University of Eswatini as well as the Eswatini branch of the Limkokwing University of Creative Technology in Malaysia.
The project promotes the co-creation of curricula, institutional capacity, systems, processes and policies.
In this way, it aims to build entrepreneurial universities equipped to respond to regional challenges and to support academic leaders in the four SADC countries that form part of the initiative, as well as to co-create curricula with industry and community partners.
The Technological Higher Education Network South Africa (THENSA), supported by OBREAL, a European organisation which promotes interregional dialogue aimed at tackling development challenges, and the Southern African Regional Universities Association, or SARUA, are involved in the project coordination, policy development, capacity-building, and long-term sustainability planning, to ensure the project’s lasting impact across the region.
What the visit seeks to achieve
The delegates will attend expert presentations by Trinity College academics and industry partners, panel discussions with alumni founders, students and innovation-agency representatives, enjoy networking opportunities to seed mentor links, and will also visit the institution’s entrepreneurial facilities.
Through the visit, participants should have a richer appreciation of how a fully integrated university-industry ecosystem can underpin entrepreneurship teaching; draw practical insights from Trinity’s IP, accelerator and industry-partner interfaces; and tap into the institution’s resources and contacts. The insights will support the process to develop a joint study module.
There will also be an end-of-visit action-planning workshop to ensure that insights are immediately translated into the joint-module roadmap.
The specific outcomes participants will aim for are to:
• Benchmark governance and structural features that enable Trinity’s success;
• Co-design a roadmap for a joint entrepreneurship module to be piloted in 2026-27;
• Gather case studies, mentorship models, and IP templates for curriculum enrichment; and
• Build a cross-institutional task team and mentor network to sustain collaboration.
Great expectations
Nadia Starr, the chief executive officer of the South African Qualifications Authority, which will have four delegates in the visiting group, says this interaction promises to provide first-hand perspectives on best practices and innovative approaches.
She said the team is keen to learn how critical factors contribute to the success of the Trinity College model, including strong institutional policies that prioritise innovation and entrepreneurship, as well as robust partnerships between academia, industry and government.
“Through workshops and site visits, we expect to gain practical insights that can be applied within our region and broaden our professional networks,” said Starr.
While the opportunity is to learn about best practices for the SADC region from the Irish institution, Professor Henk de Jager, the CEO of THENSA, said it was important to ensure that entrepreneurial skills are instilled in students, adding that UNIICo-create plans to unite experts across the SADC and globally, ensuring that entrepreneurial mindsets to prepare graduates for the world of work are boosted through the initiative.
Whelan, responsible for commercialising ICT research at Trinity College, which was founded in 1592, said it was an honour to welcome the delegation, as Ireland had spent the past 40 years transforming itself from a poor economy with high unemployment into a smart, innovation-driven nation.
“Much of that progress came from investing in education and building strong university-industry partnerships. We’re pleased to share that journey and offer practical insights that African institutions can adapt to their own contexts,” Whelan said.
Whelan added that, while no single programme can solve unemployment, building stronger entrepreneurial education and closer ties between universities and industry creates real opportunities.
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