The Mandela Mining Precinct is mandated to facilitate the development of skills, capacity and capability in mining research, development and innovation. To this end, four South African Mining Extraction RDI (SAMERDI) Research Centres are being established at the Universities of Pretoria, Johannesburg, and the Witwatersrand.
“This allows us to utilise existing facilities and entities, with structures that are working and already in place thus, keeping the capital requirements as well as internal overheads low,” said Mandela Mining Precinct Strategic Advisor, Dick Kruger who is spearheading this initiative.
These centres have been designed to perform the required basic research while allowing for a number of post graduate students to obtain higher degrees. The universities are encouraged to involve post graduate students from historically disadvantaged universities in their research work, with each Centre required to support at least four post graduate students- of which least one must come from a historically disadvantaged university.
