{"id":805264,"date":"2025-01-06T13:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=805264"},"modified":"2025-01-06T13:09:28","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T11:09:28","slug":"south-africas-private-afrikaans-university-showing-incredible-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/lifestyle\/805264\/south-africas-private-afrikaans-university-showing-incredible-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa’s private Afrikaans university showing incredible growth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Private Afrikaans university Akademia has shown strong growth over the last twelve years, with plans to grow its presence in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Akademia was established by the labour union Solidarity and has been providing lectures in Afrikaans to students since 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it was founded, the university only offered part-time distance learning with contact classes at a study centre in Centurion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This changed in 2021 when Akademia launched a small campus in Die Hoewes, Centurion, that offers full-time classes and includes accommodation for students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then, it has shown exceptional growth with a significant increase in students and degrees it offers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Akademia now offers BCom degrees in economics and law, business management, and financial management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also offers a BEd in intermediary education, LLB, a BSc in mathematical sciences, a BA in communications and journalism, and a BSocSci politics degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Akademia added its first tech-focused degree, a BSc in Computer Science degree, in the 2023 academic year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To accommodate its rapid growth, the university is developing a new campus in partnership with real estate development company Kanton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The comprehensive R3-billion facility is based along Boschkop Road in Pretoria East, roughly eight kilometres from Solomon Mahlangu Drive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The campus will support an extensive academic programme across all its faculties, with a capacity for 5,000 full-time undergraduate students and 1,500 postgraduate students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The campus will include office blocks, lecture halls, laboratories, an auditorium, and dedicated research halls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It will also feature a cafeteria, restaurants, coffee shops, a student centre, a library, and staff accommodation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There will be four men\u2019s and four women\u2019s residences, with enough rooms to accomodate 1,500 students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kanton managing director Henk Schalekamp said that phase one of the project will cost approximately R1.8 billion and be completed on 1 January 2028.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe second phase will see the completion of the academic campus and residences, followed by the sports facilities, a chapel and auditorium,\u201d Schalekamp said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This will include world-class sports facilities for rugby, cricket, netball, tennis, athletics, hockey, swimming, and indoor sports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is also an experimental farm planned for the faculties of natural sciences and agriculture,\u201d Schalekamp added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Akademia is also launching a campus for full-time students in the Western Cape, which will be ready by 2026. This will add to its two full-time campuses in Centurion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plan is to establish the campus in the triangle formed by the northern suburbs, Stellenbosch, and Paarl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The university already offers three study centres for part-time students in George, Paarl, and Somerset West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Akademia decided to establish a full-time campus in the Western Cape because the province has the highest concentration of Afrikaans speakers in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new campus will offer students courses in economics and management sciences, humanities, law, natural sciences, and teacher education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The university is also expanding its after-hours distance model, aiming to double the student numbers by 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schalekamp said they are building a giant monument for Afrikaans higher education through its new campuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Akademia managing director Marthinus Visser called the new campus the \u201crealisation of a big dream\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis requires the strength of an aligned community that can achieve the seemingly impossible through unity and cooperation,\u201d Visser said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New campus plan<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Private Afrikaans university Akademia has shown strong growth over the last twelve years, with plans to grow its presence in South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":805265,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9876],"tags":[20340,21302,1632],"class_list":["post-805264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-akademia","tag-kanton","tag-solidarity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":805272,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805264\/revisions\/805272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}