University of Missouri System


For decades, the University of Missouri South African Education Program (UMSAEP) has delivered on the goal of aiding South Africans disadvantaged by their government’s former apartheid policies. Since 1986, the University of Missouri System has partnered with the University of the Western Cape to advance mutual understanding between the institutions’ Faculties and foster cooperative teaching, research and service projects.

President Mun Choi, Rector of Missouri University with Prof Pretorius Rector of UWC and a UWC Nursing student.

When UWC and the UM System first began their academic co-operation in 1986, UWC was a university established exclusively for ‘Coloured’ students under the apartheid regime. Not surprisingly, it was badly underfunded. Nonetheless, UWC was one of the intellectual centres of the anti-apartheid movement. The co-operative agreement between UWC and the UM System was the first of its kind between a non-white South African university and a U.S. university. Today, UWC operates under a democratic philosophy and has been recognised as the Seventh Best University on the African continent.

In South Africa, the term ‘Coloured’ is used to describe anyone of mixed race and is not considered a derogatory term.

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