Page 17 - Science in Africa

Professor Catherine Hoppers

rofessor Catherine Odora
Hoppers is a scholar and policy
specialist on international
development, education, north-
south questions, disarmament,
Ppeace and human security.
She is a Unesco expert in basic education,
lifelong learning, information systems and
science and society; an expert in
disarmament at the UN Department of
Disarmament Affairs; an expert to the World
Economic Forum on benefit sharing and
value-addition protocols; and the World
Intellectual Property Organisation on
traditional knowledge and community
intellectual property rights.
Her core research interests are building
capacity for transdisciplinary basic, applied
and strategic research in support of Africa’s
development; providing support for policy
formulation and implementation for
sustainable development and human security
in Africa and internationally; promoting the
social and economic justice agenda including
the rights of local communities; and
promoting dialogue across cultures and
epistemologies by developing protocols for
respectful cultural exchange, strengthening
the enfranchisement of Africans, and
promoting endogenous research.
These objectives are translated into
activities and unique areas of competence
Professor Hoppers has made across the
world. They include: strategic knowledge and
human resource intervention into the
academy across the globe; international and
regional development involving the UN
agencies and multilateral and bilateral donors;
South Africa’s transformation and the African
Renaissance initiatives, including being
technical adviser to the parliamentary
portfolio committee on arts, culture, science
and technology; and being a resource person
to the Committee of Heads of Science Educator
Councils.
She was appointed to head a task team to
draft the national policy on indigenous
knowledge systems in South Africa, which is
under full implementation under the
department of science and technology (South and scholar
Africa).
The book she authored in 2002, titled
Indigenous Knowledge and the Integration of
Knowledge Systems: Towards a Philosophy of
Articulation, was a hallmark book that is still Thabo Mbeki. In August 2015, Professor is a strategically focused knowledge and
referred to worldwide. Hoppers was awarded Woman of the Year by human resource intervention into the higher
Her other areas of competence include the University of South Africa (Unisa), and education landscape in South Africa. Its core
higher education in southern Africa; and was named as a leading educationist and was mandates are to advance the frontiers of
sectors such as adult education; further honoured in the Gallery of Leadership as knowledge through focused research in
education and training; and gender and social theone of the 63 most influential people who identified fields; create new research career
policy across Africa. have shaped Unisa since its inception in 1873, pathways for highly skilled, high-quality
In July 2015 she received the Nelson in a permanent exhibition in the Kgorong young and mid-career researchers; and
Mandela Distinguished Africanist Award for Building at Unisa. stimulate strategic research across the
her pursuit of the total liberation for the Professor Hoppers holds a South African knowledge spectrum.
African continent through the promotion of research chair in development education at In 2017, she was given a distinction of being
indigenous knowledge systems of education Unisa; a national chair set up by the awarded the Unesco Institute for Education’s
given by former South African president department of science and technology, which Honorary Fellow in Lifelong Learning.
SCIENCE IN AFRICA 17