Visiting professor Hanri Mostert appointed to South African Research Chairs Initiative

Professor Hanri Mostert is one of five prominent female researchers at University of Cape Town, South Africa, to have been awarded South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) Chairs in their respective fields as part of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and National Research Foundation (NRF) initiative to promote women in research. Prof. Mostert is visiting professor at the Department of Private Law and Notary Law, Groningen Centre for Law and Governance, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.

The latest SARChI call was directed specifically at women researchers as part of an effort to correct the local and global gender imbalance in research. According to the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), women account for only about 30% of the world's researchers, while only one in five countries have achieved gender parity in research. The SARChI Women in Research initiative invited public South African universities to submit up to five research proposals, which were then assessed by a rigorous NRF-managed peer-review process.

The launch of the Research Chair will be celebrated at the seminar Mining & Waste: The law's responses to solutions for theory and practice, which takes place on 27 May 2016 at UCT.

Professor Hanri Mostert: Mineral Law in Africa

African countries with vast mineral wealth often display slower-than-expected economic growth and political instability. This contradiction lays the African continent bare to exploitative and invasive practices that feed off the lack of capacity and knowledge needed to improve law making and implementation and to improve mining contract negotiation. This Chair will facilitate the creation of a hotbed for the evaluation and re-conceptualisation of Africa?s laws on minerals and mining, especially for those countries whose economies are directed by mineral resource extraction. It will assist lawyers to understand the law and governance aspects of mineral resource extraction better, so that they can respond to society and industry needs more appropriately. It will do so by accumulating information about, critically engaging with and disseminating knowledge about Africa?s mineral laws.

Professor Hanri Mostert lectures property law and mineral law at UCT and is visiting professor at the Department of Private Law and Notary Law, Groningen Centre for Law and Governance, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Her original interests in property law matured into specialisations in Land Law and Mineral Law. In these fields, she has contributed to the most authoritative sources on South African law, addressing issues of constitutional property protection, landlessness, tenure security, restitution, nationalisation, land governance and mineral resource regulation. Her work on mineral law has been cited with approval by both the Supreme Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court in South Africa. Prof Mostert has held fellowships with the Commonwealth Programme, the Max Planck Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service and the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation. The South African Department of Science and Technology nominated her as the runner-up for the Young Women in Science Award 2013.

This article was published by the Faculty of Law.

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