The African Mountain Research Foundation (AMRF), in association with the Afromontane Research Unit (ARU) of the University of the Free State (UFS), and the Global Mountain Safeguard Research Programme (Glomos), is hosting the first-ever Southern African Mountain Conference.

The theme of the conference is ‘Southern African Mountains – their value and vulnerabilities’.

The conference will bring relevant people together for networking and information sharing, which is expected to lead to more robust regional and international collaborations and comparative mountain studies with an increase in research activities, student capacity, researcher capacity and academic outputs that feed into policy and action.

The conference is being held from March 14 to 17 in the Maloti-Drakensberg mountains in South Africa and Lesotho.

According to the event website, this is a Southern African regional mountain conference, targeting the African region south of the Congo rainforest (DRC) and Lake Rukwa (Tanzania), but including Madagascar, the Comoros and the Mascarenes (that is, Angola, the Comoros, the Democratic Republic of the Congo [southern mountains], eSwatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, La Réunion, South Africa, southern Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe).

ARU director Dr Ralph Clark says the conference is a high-level international event with United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) patronage and valuable sponsors.

“The programme will have six parallel tracks (one being dedicated to postgraduate students), with about 200 papers being delivered. In addition, we have some very high-profile special sessions, such as a special session on long-term monitoring activities and associated data availability for climate change-related applications across Africa’s mountains, as well as a Unesco special session on regional collaboration.

“We also have Prof Julian Bayliss, described as the man who discovered an unseen world, as the guest speaker at the closing event,” he says.