The University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (UCT GSB) has clinched international acclaim, taking home the prestigious Gold Award for Ecosystem Development at the 2025 EFMD Excellence in Practice (EiP) Awards. This top honour celebrates exceptional impact in Ecosystem Development and highlights powerful collaborations between organisations and their learning partners. This is the second EiP Gold Award that UCT GSB has won, following success in 2019, when the school became the first African winner, for its partnership programme with Standard Bank CIB.

“The UCT GSB is delighted by the EiP gold award win,” says Jodie Martin, UCT GSB Head: Executive Education. “The final product of the case study was such a powerful portfolio of evidence about the transformational work done by all the stakeholders to uplift the South African educational system for educators, learners, and their communities.”  

For PAT CEO, Keith Richardson, the case study celebrates a programme that has been running for over 13 years and has adapted and changed multiple times into its current form. “Bringing back hope to our education system is the concept which the Principals Academy has put in place in Cape Town schools for over a decade. Serving principals have been coached and mentored by retired principals, enabling them to rise up and take ownership of their schools.”

The 2025 EFMD Excellence in Practice (EiP) Award is an initiative of the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), which is a leading global network in management development and has over 950 member organisations in over 90 countries. 

The EiP Awards are considered flagship global recognitions in executive education as they reward a clearly defined business challenge linked to strategy. They also look for a strong partnering and commitment between stakeholders and an effective and appropriate learning and development initiative. There must also be demonstrated and measurable business and human impact. The UCT/PAT case study joins a distinguished list of past winners including Unilever, Lego Group, Audi UK and Randstad. 

“What is special about this particular collaboration between the UCT GSB, PAT and the Capitec Foundation, is the unique blend of internal and external expertise that could be brought to bear on an endemic issue in the SA education system,” says Rayner Canning, UCT GSB Director of Business Development and Executive Education.

The case study, entitled: Empowering principals to transform schools reveals that the majority of schools in SA’s Western Cape serve marginalised communities that suffer from destitution, unemployment and high levels of crime and struggle to adequately serve their learners’ needs. But by recognising principals as key levers of change, the UCT GSB/PAT initiative imparts critical leadership and management skills. The case study shows how this has resulted in a positive reach into 25% of marginalised schools, with improved academic outcomes, higher pass rates and better school practices and learning culture.  

Canning says winning the category of gold for Ecosystem Development was humbling and rewarding. “It is recognition of the important work being done in Africa, by Africans, through education, to improve the prospects of a generation of young African school children.” He added that the tripartite partnership between the UCT GSB, PAT and the Capitec Foundation was an example of how Africa’s problems could be addressed.

For Richardson, the award was also for the principals who participated in the programme over the years. He noted, “Also celebrating, will be the nearly 300 marginalised schools who, over the past twelve years have benefitted from these invaluable injections of hope, expertise and wisdom.”