Privately owned Afrikaans, Christian higher education institution Akademia has announced the development of a R3.2-billion campus in Pretoria East.

The campus will be developed by real estate development group Kanton, which will seek funding from investors and banking institutions, while Akademia has started a drive for donations to contribute to the building costs.

Kanton will select a main contractor for the construction work internally in 2025.

The land parcel is already secured.

Construction is set to start in 2026, with the first students to enrol in 2028.

The new campus will consolidate Akademia’s current, temporary facilities – two campuses, four residences, two day-houses and an administrative head office in Centurion –into one in Pretoria East, says Kanton MD Henk Schalekamp.

“We’ll build the campus and Akademia will rent it from us.”

The project is aimed at ensuring the sustainability of higher education in Afrikaans as State-owned universities move towards English as their medium of instruction, he adds.

“Anyone can study at Akademia,” notes Schalekamp, “as long they understand that the institution’s building blocks are Christian-orientated and they will have to be proficient in Afrikaans.”

The development will be located eight kilometres from Solomon Mahlangu drive on the Boschkop road.

This campus will cater for 5 000 full-time undergraduate students and nearly 1 500 postgraduate students.

Four men’s and four women’s residences will house 1 500 students on campus.

The campus will comprise office blocks, lecture halls, laboratories, an auditorium, a chapel, dedicated research halls, cafeteria, restaurants, coffee shops, a student centre, a library, residences, staff accommodation and sports facilities for rugby, cricket, netball, tennis, athletics, hockey, swimming and indoor sports.

An experimental farm is also planned for the natural sciences and agriculture faculties.

Schalekamp says Kanton’s project development success has been confirmed by the construction of the Sol-Tech private technical training institution, which was delivered on time and within budget for the Solidarity movement.

Sol-Tech offers formal training to prospective electricians, millwrights, diesel mechanics, fitters and turners, welders and tool-and-die makers.

The new campus will afford Akademia the opportunity to expand its offering to include engineering and medical faculties, says Schalekamp.

The medical faculty will aim to include optometry and nursing as its first degrees, with the initial engineering offering to include electrical and electronic engineering.

Other faculties will also be added and expanded. The aim is to grow all the faculties over time to include most disciplines found at other universities.

Schalekamp says Akademia also aims to open a satellite campus in Paarl, in the Western Cape, in 2026, with Bloemfontein and George also on the drawing board.

“Private universities have a bright future,” says Schalekamp, “especially in Africa, where they are growing faster than State-owned institutions.

Also, contrary to popular belief, Afrikaans-speaking communities in South Africa are still growing.

“Demographically, there is a trend for these communities to concentrate in the major cities of South Africa, with Pretoria and the Cape having the largest concentrations.”

Schalekamp says Akademia’s qualifications are accredited with the Department of Higher Education, with some degrees also accredited internationally.

The institution opened its doors with 40 students in 2012, and currently has 3 187 students. It also supports part-time distance learning.

Special Structural Elements
There are two special structural elements to be deployed within the new campus, says Schalekamp.

The first is a glass dome that will serve as a covering for the amphitheatre stage, as well as an aesthetic architectural feature.

The dome will be 34 m in diameter with a steel frame and concrete ring beam.

About one-third of the ring beam has no column support. This part of the ring beam will be suspended by bonded multi- strand cables from a 23-m-high obelisk.

The other special structural element is the entrance port to the academic node.

It will consist of ten main columns with a seven- metre cantilevered top.

To make the cantilever possible, the engineers will tie the foundations and concrete cantilevered roof structure together with bonded multi-strand cables cast into the ten support columns.