Mancosa wants SA to be globally competitive

The Management College of Southern Africa (Mancosa) is to launch a school for digital and technology skills, says director Zaheer Hamid. Such skills are “inextricably linked with SA’s competitive position in the global digital economy”.

The Durban-based school also plans to expand its Cape Town and Tshwane campuses and introduce a series of new business education programmes.

Mancosa specialised in distance and online education long before the Covid pandemic forced business schools to pursue them en masse, so suffered relatively little disruption from the sector’s changeover from traditional classroom teaching.

Hamid says it’s too early to predict what the post-Covid education landscape will look like. It’s hard enough at the best of times. “With a global pandemic, the future is even more nebulous.”  Despite this, he says Mancosa can’t sit still. “We have been engineering our education offerings to align to what we believe to be desirable … for a post-Covid landscape.”

Corporate executive education clients are also feeling their way. When Covid first struck, many sought business school guidance on how to confront short-term lockdown and recessionary threats. Even now, “very few organisations enjoy the luxury of focusing solely on the long term”, says Hamid. 

The school also plans to deepen its activities in the rest of Africa.  It is a member of Honoris United Universities, a network of 14 African higher-education institutions operating in 32 cities in 10 countries, with over 70 campuses and 57,000 students. Together, they offer more than 30 degree programmes.

“This is a good example of collaboration, agility and commitment to transform education on the African continent and promote an African brand of education excellence to the world,” says Hamid.

He says SA business schools can lead academic and research activities in the continent’s quest to become a senior member of the globalised world – “a world where the resources, intellectual capital and cultural diversity are harnessed to benefit the people of Africa”.