Regional education visa mooted in SADC strategic plan
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is considering a regional visa for students, researchers, scientists and academics in a development that could see them enjoying benefits such as customs exemptions, if it is approved.
It builds on the SADC ‘Protocol on Education and Training: Interventions’, which deals with regional mobility in the education sector, and has included the treatment of SADC students as local students with respect to tuition, application and examination fees in public universities in most of the 16 member states.
The SADC protocol acknowledges that, while each member state has its own policies for education and training, there is a need to develop harmonised and eventually standardised policies regarding education and training. These projects are well under way, according to the new development plan.
Female student leaders face ongoing harassment
In November 2019, Abiona Mataranyika made history by becoming the first female to be elected as president of the University of Zimbabwe Student Representative Council, more than six decades after the inception of this higher learning institution.
It has not been an easy road, and she has had to face continuing cyber-bullying, including trolling and insensitive and defamatory remarks.
Yet Mataranyika, who is pursuing a dual honours degree in French and Portuguese, soldiered on.
In an interview with
University World News, she said the online harassment continues up to this day.
“There was character assassination. People would create ghost accounts to say bad things about me. There was body shaming; wanting to make me feel inferior,” she said.