- Grantee:
- University of the Western Cape
Expanding Life Sciences at the University of the Western Cape
The Life Sciences Building houses six departments and provides space for 500 graduate scientists
as well as many more undergraduate students
A well-timed question about unfulfilled needs during the Atlantic Board’s visit to the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in 2005 led Founding Chairman Chuck Feeney to help this institution with the mission of serving historically marginalised people to build a world-class Life Sciences Building.
Mr. Feeney learned that UWC was producing internationally recognised research despite its lack of proper facilities and current technology, which prevented the scientists from achieving their full potential.
The work ranged from the continent’s leading groundwater data collection and analysis, development of the first male contraception pill that appears to be side-effect free, to studies on an important hydrogen fuel cell. In 2005, UWC’s South African Herbal Sciences and Medicines Institute, in collaboration with the University of Missouri in the U.S., was selected over 1,500 institutions to establish a United Nations-sponsored global centre for the study of traditional medicines.
Atlantic’s grants for ZAR123.7 million (approximately $17 million) proved the catalyst for change and were ultimately matched by the South Africa Department of Education, ending its 15-year moratorium on government spending for higher education infrastructure.
In July 2010, the Life Sciences Building–the best of its kind in Africa and one of the continent’s greenest buildings–became the home of the National Bioinformatics Institute, the Water Research Programme, South Africa’s only Male Fertility Research unit, the Herbal Sciences and Medicines Institute, the South African Institute for Advanced Materials Chemistry, the Chemistry and Nanotechnology Innovation Centre, the Groundwater Centre and its six departments: biodiversity and conservation biology, biotechnology, earth sciences, medical biosciences, natural sciences and physics. These departments have greater possibility for collaboration in the new building, which was designed to encourage social and professional interaction.
At the dedication, UWC Chancellor Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said, the Life Sciences Building symbolises how far the university has come to be “a global participant in international research. In these labs, our scholars will engage in finding ways to create a better life for our beautiful country, our continent and the wider world.”
The new Life Sciences programmes have spread their influence throughout Africa. Today, UWC produces the largest number of black and female science graduates. Founded in 1960 as a segregated university for coloured South Africans and people of mixed races, UWC has a tradition of creative struggle against oppression, discrimination and disadvantage.
Learn More:
>Slideshow of UWC's Life Sciences Building
>UWC Flagship Will Move African Science Forward, UWC Newsletter, Issue 6, 2010
