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Former President of the University of Johannesburg Ihron Rensburg offers a powerful reflection on global engagement, grounded in his role as Global Fellow and his deep experience building coalitions across sectors. He challenges traditional models of aid and urges partners to commit to shared, long-term transformation rooted in humility and trust. The goal: co-creation toward African intellectual, cultural, and scientific sovereignty.
So one of the African, many African proverbs always springs to mind. And it goes as follows. If you want to go fast, you go alone. If you want to go far, you go together. In essence, what that means is that when we build partnerships, we've got to think of the long haul. I spoke of horizons, and that those horizons may be set to your horizons, not six month windows.
Right. And so we've got to think about it with our partners. So what does this long journey mean as we think about going together? Because it's far that we need to go three, four decades. And so that's the first thing that comes to mind. I think a key one in all of this is trust. And trust is built over time.
Yeah. Trust, of course, is catalyzed when one is able to see in the partner vulnerability and humility. As much as I have, the partner on the other side is vulnerable and has a sense of urgency of wanting to press forward. But at the same time, I'm vulnerable as well. And so the importance of, of appreciating, that this is a journey of growing together as opposed to a journey of one party being the giver and the other one, the receiver, that is a completely different pedagogical or philosophical approach to the one that suggests that we grow together.
All right. So those are just some of the immediate thoughts that come to mind about partnership and the importance of recognizing that this journey for African institutions is a journey for Africa. Right? And this journey for Africa is a journey for the planet. Because if Africa's journey, on the one hand, copy simply the industrialization pathways of the West and of the East, then we are definitely gonna crash this planet of ourselves, of ours, right?
On the other hand, if we falter and the dividend becomes a malthusian nightmare, the planetary consequences as well. And so journeying therefore, with five, six, ten, 15 African institutions in particular, those that are catalytic and impactful institutions, is a journey with and for Africa out of its current. Border posting into a new possibility of better planned but massive inclusive development.
That is participatory and transformative, right at the level of society through to the level of state and through to the level of [the] continent that is palpable, that's visible, that is felt and experienced by everyone. And so if we think of it then as more than an institution to institution partnership and one of an institution taking on with par institutions this enormous task of catalyzing an African Renaissance, then it takes on a different kind of proposition, to perhaps the way we have done this kind of work, in the past.
So ultimately, this is about enabling Africa to grow its intellectual, its scientific, and for that matter, its political, economic, social, cultural, [and] sovereignty.