UCT-RU Language Development Plan Collaboration
The University of Cape Town (UCT) and Rhodes University (RU) met to explore pathways for collaboration on the language development plans for the respective universities. UCT was represented by Prof Lolie Makhubu-Badenhorst who is the director of the Multilingualism Education Project who is also the Coordinator for the UCT Language Development Plan (LDP), while Rhodes was represented by Dr Sisonke Mawonga the Project Manager of the Rhodes University Language Development Plan (LDP)under the DVC: Transformation.
The meeting took place on the 1st of December 2025 at UCT. The crux of the collaboration considered that both the universities continue implementing the LDP projects from their respective universities, they saw the necessity for exploring opportunities to collaborate with fellow institutions on areas of mutual interest.
Both universities shared experiences, compared implementation strategies, and identified possible avenues for collaboration—whether through capacity development, shared resources, joint initiatives, or knowledge exchange.
The identified possible collaboration include, inter alia, terminology development projects including the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB); sharing the available resources that would include materials such as the isiXhosa spellchecker available at the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR); language research and the participation at the hosted language events by the two universities.
Both the universities agree to collaborate beyond the LDP project taking into account the existing MoA that includes the consortium of 5 other universities.