Friends of UKZN Agriculture (FoUA) is a network of people and organisations affiliated to UKZN’s School of Agricultural, Earth & Environmental Sciences (SAEES) and its antecedent institutions that exists to promote, establish and foster mutually beneficial relationships between SAEES, alumni of the University’s agricultural disciplines and agribusinesses.
What we do
- Keep alumni connected to one another
- Keep alumni up to date with what’s happening at SAEES
- Facilitate the initiation of contract research, student internships and graduate recruitment, bursaries, field trips, guest speaker slots, and more between industry and SAEES
- Provide alumni with opportunities to “plough back in” to their alma mater
- Help the University ensure that it remains relevant to the agricultural industry in the service and training it provides
history
The need for this “relationship-catalyst” was mooted by alumni of the university who realised that some of SAEES’s inter-organisational agribusiness networks had suffered as a consequence of considerable change at UKZN, and in the KZN agricultural community in general. SAEES academics and management embraced the idea, and following a six month period of brainstorming and planning by the founding committee, the Friends of UKZN Agriculture alumnus association was launched on the 25th of May 2012 at a function attended by 150 people at the Royal Show in Pietermaritzburg.