Welcome to the Postgraduate School of Agriculture
and Rural Development
The Postgraduate School of Agriculture and Rural Development (PGSARD) is a research and teaching unit within the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences. Established in 1991, the teaching and research efforts of the PGSARD have focussed on rural development issues, with a bias towards agriculture. Postgraduate teaching is offered in various disciplines, including agricultural economics, animal production, plant production, protection and quarantine, food processing, sustainable ecological management, sustainable insect management, land development and land-use planning and extension.
Research focuses on issues such as land reform, agricultural and rural finance, role of agriculture in poverty reduction, promoting market participation of smallholder farmers, and baseline studies for facilitating monitoring and evaluation of development programmes and projects. In addition to research and teaching, the PGSARD has implemented numerous community development programmes throughout southern Africa.
TuksGolf Training Centre officially opened at the University of Pretoria - 17/05/2013
The University of Pretoria prides itself on its publicly recognised achievements pertaining to its various sporting fraternities. These achievements can be attributed to the University’s sporting facilities, which are of the highest quality among South African universities. To add to its quality achievements, the University of Pretoria, through TuksSport and the High Performance Centre (hpc), has now officially opened a golf training centre.
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South African law professor to report to the United Nations on Lethal Robots - 16/05/2013
South African human rights law professor, Christof Heyns, will submit a widely anticipated report on Lethal Autonomous Robots (LARs) to the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council on 29 May 2013.
Prof Heyns, from the University of Pretoria (UP), was appointed as UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions in 2010. During last year, he conducted worldwide research on the question whether states should be allowed to use LARs - weapons that, once deployed, can use lethal force without further human intervention - during war, or peace.
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A continental Leadership Transformation Programme established - 15/05/2013
The African Union’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Albert Luthuli Centre for Responsible Leadership (ALCRL) recently co-hosted a roundtable aimed at establishing a continental leadership transformation programme.
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