The Siyaphumelela (“We Succeed”) initiative seeks to broaden evidence-based postsecondary student success strategies across South Africa.

During the Siyaphumelela 2023 conference the President and CEO of the Kresge Foundation, Rip Rapson, announced funding for the third phase of embedding student success in South African higher education and invited Saide to continue to be the backbone institution for the Siyaphumelela Network 3.0 and South African Higher Education Institutions to apply to become Partners in the this Network.

The Siyaphumelela Network 3.0 aims to advance and refine the principles underpinning the first two phases of the Siyaphumelela Initiative. These principles centre around collaborative efforts to advance equity in South African higher education by:

1. Establishing a more student-centred culture in South Africa’s higher education system to improve student completion rates and reduce race and gender equity differences.
2. Improving institutional capacity to collect and use student data to improve student success across the higher education system.
3. Expanding evidence-based student success efforts on a national scale, using a networked approach that builds on existing strengths, shares capacity throughout the system, and serves institutions based on their current needs and abilities.

Siyaphumelela uses a collective impact approach to systemically change how universities serve students nationally and within institutions, focusing on institutional change.

The Kresge foundation continues to support the second phase of the programme which remains committed to identifying cost-effective methods of delivering high-quality postsecondary instruction through the latest technological and productivity advances.

Siyaphumelela Partner Institutions play a leading role in the development of new tools for their own institution and for the system, lead and support development of a regional network, provide services, and make use of and learn from other services.  

Siyaphumelela Associate Institutions, are high performing new members of the Siyaphumelela Network, and provide additional services as appropriate and could either lead or contribute to the regional networks. In addition, they make use of and learn from other services. 

Siyaphumelela Participant Institutions are more developmental in their orientation and contribute to regional networks and make use of services to develop their institutions.