South Africa’s universities are accelerating efforts to align engineering, research and innovation capabilities with the mining sector’s rapid transition towards decarbonisation, says University of Pretoria vice-chancellor and principal Professor Francis Petersen.

Decarbonisation is forcing mining companies to transform operational processes, adopt digital technologies at scale and re-evaluate long-term planning assumptions, he says.

Petersen, who will participate in this year’s Investing in African Mining Indaba, says academic institutions must renew curricula, deepen industry collaboration and co-create technology solutions if they are to meaningfully support the sector’s evolving needs.

The starting point, he says, is continuous renewal, which includes an institutional willingness to adapt academic programmes, research agendas and teaching methods as the external environment shifts.

“Universities cannot remain static – they need to renew themselves, understand the environment and its trends, and bring that into the curriculum and into research.”

This requires academics to stay in close dialogue with their mining, chemical and energy-sector counterparts so that the evolution of technology, regulation and skills demand is consistently reflected in university thinking, he adds.

Petersen highlights that researchers must increasingly engage with multiple industrial value chains, recognising that decarbonisation links mining to chemical processing, energy generation and emerging green-energy platforms. These interconnections, he argues, require a more integrated research ecosystem spanning engineering, applied sciences, policy research and industry partnerships.

Deepening Industry Collaboration

Central to this shift is the quality of collaboration between universities and mining companies. Advisory boards, joint research initiatives and structured engagement forums already exist, but Petersen believes that the next phase demands a more active and co-creative approach.

He argues that traditional models, where companies present problems and researchers generate solutions, are no longer fast enough.

“We need to start to co-create solutions so that academics and industry colleagues operate in teams, rather than the industry saying: ‘Here is the challenge, can you solve it?’,” he explains.



Minerals beneficiation is another area that depends on higher-end skills, international collaboration and cross-border research partnerships.

Mining companies are increasingly working with global technology providers – a trend that requires local universities to extend their networks and participate in multinational research consortia.