During the recent State visit to South Africa, the Norwegian King and Queen attended the opening ceremony of two South African – Norwegian seminars at the University of Cape Town (UCT) on 26 November. The accompanying delegation included Tora Aasland, Minister of Research and Education in Norway and Naledi Pandor, Minister of Science and Technology in South Africa, who both gave addresses at the opening. The official opening speech of the seminars was delivered by Queen Sonja. Dr Guy Midgley of the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) gave the introductory key-note speech on behalf of the science community. (See links for the full text of the speeches and news items from various web-pages - some in Norwegian only)

The seminars centred around the cooperation between South Africa and Norway in the fields of higher education and research on environment and climate change. After the opening, the higher education seminar continued at the University of the Western Cape, while the researchers’ seminar stayed on at UCT (see link for the full programme). The latter was organised jointly by the Research Council of Norway and the National Research Foundation and was partly organised as a workshop. The purpose was to have researchers and research administrators stake out the course for a possible phase III in the bilateral research cooperation programme, with focus on environment and climate change. The presentations made at the workshop are available under “Seminar 2009).

After the opening ceremony, the Royal delegation proceeded to the Uitsig suburb of Cape Town where a local TB-clinic was visited. The Uitsig clinic specialises on TB treatment and prevention, especially among children, and collaborates closely with Stellenbosch University. Several researchers are directly involved in the daily work at the clinic, both in order to collect data, but also in order to put research results into practice. Among the international collaborators in the research undertakings at Uitsig are scientists from the University of Bergen. The delegation was received by representatives of the Stellenbosch University and Cape Town mayor Dan Plato, who himself grew up in Uitsig.