A delegation from Akademia participated in an annual international collaboration week of the Artevelde University of Applied Sciences in Ghent, Belgium, from 13 to 16 November. This event took place concurrently with the Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) and aimed to celebrate and expand entrepreneurship as a vehicle for innovation and job creation.

The delegation, led by Johann Smith (lecturer in Management Sciences) and Elizma van Zyl (academic assistant in Management Sciences), included five students from the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. These students – Benjamin Halliday, Kayla van der Ryst, Juandré Bresler, Tiaan Botha and Chandré Neuland – proudly represented Akademia. Moreover, Botha and Neuland were members of the team that won this annual entrepreneurship competition. In preparation for the competition, the mentor team, which included Smith and Van Zyl, together identified five of the United Nations (UN) development goals that were to serve as inspiration for the students’ respective business plans.

According to Smith, the collaboration week aimed to provide students with exposure to international collaboration. In the run-up to the event, participating students each identified a development goal that they found interesting and were consequently grouped into teams with the same interest. Those teams, made up of students from different universities across three continents, met virtually before gathering in Ghent. As soon as the various teams arrived in Belgium, they followed an intensive programme during which they had to identify a problem (on the basis of their chosen development objective), point out a business opportunity and finally present their business idea to their peers and a panel of experts. There were also certain group activities that had to be completed beforehand and special prizes were awarded based on this. Two of the three groups that won prizes had Akademia students as members.

Akademia’s participation in this dynamic entrepreneurship event followed a goodwill visit by Smith in March 2022. After this visit, Smith was approached in November of the same year to be one of the mentors during the collaboration week, after which he was able to accompany a team of students from his own soil this year. Meanwhile, Akademia also signed a memorandum of understanding with Artevelde.

“The world is truly interwoven, and no one works in complete isolation anymore,” said Smith, adding that the chances were very good that students who studied BCom (Business Management) at Akademia would have to work with international peers in the course of their careers. “This event offers students incredible exposure and serves as an important experience platform from which they can work with students from different countries towards a shared goal,” explained Smith.