Five athletes from the North-West University (NWU) have been selected for the South African under 20 squad that will compete at the 2026 World Athletics U20 Championships in Oregon, USA, from 5 to 9 August.

The championships, to be held at Hayward Field at the University of Oregon, will bring together leading junior athletes from across the world in what is regarded as one of the biggest international competitions for emerging track and field talent.

High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, remains the leading preventable cause of premature death worldwide. The Hypertension in Africa Research Team (HART) at the North-West University (NWU) is making it their mission to educate people on and raise awareness about the dangers of this “silent killer”.

On 14 May 2026, the Technology Transfer and Innovation Support Office (TTIS) at the North-West University (NWU) hosted a commemorative event to celebrate the granting of a European patent for a novel method to determine the risk of chronic stress and stroke.

The event brought together members of the Faculty of Health Sciences, family, friends and former colleagues of Prof. Leone Malan and her late husband, Prof. Nico Malan, whose decades of research underpin the invention.

The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) hosted at the North-West University (NWU), in collaboration with its Child Language Development node at Stellenbosch University, will host a South African Sign Language (SASL) dissemination event on 29 May 2026.

The negative unemployment figures for the first quarter of 2026 are another early warning signal of the shock that the global energy crisis is beginning to have on the South African economy and jobs.

Prof. Raymond Parsons, economist from the North-West University (NWU) Business School, says that while the economy has some resilience and economic buffers, these buffers are limited and partial, with – for now – little room to extend them.

Violent crime in South Africa is rampant, with the country frequently ranked as one of the most dangerous in the world, as well as among the most unsafe in Africa. Citizens are afraid, and justifiably so, adapting to crime as though it is no longer temporary, but permanent. This fear has for decades quietly been redesigning suburban South Africa.

The North-West University (NWU) has launched a new Law School to Law Firm series aimed at bridging the gap between academic theory and the practical realities of the legal profession.

The initiative, led by the Law Students’ Academic Chapter (LSAC), is designed to equip final-year and postgraduate law students with the tools, insights and confidence needed to enter the workplace.

South Africa does not suffer from a knowledge deficit. It suffers from a translation deficit. The country produces knowledge at scale as universities generate research, publishing extensively and graduating thousands of students each year. Yet, despite this intellectual productivity, graduate unemployment remains high, critical skills shortages persist and a divide remains between what graduates know and what they are able to do.