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Prof Zoliswa Fikelepi-Twani, Head of the Department of Creative Arts at UNIZULU, spoke on reclaiming African art forms as legitimate sites of knowledge. Dr Bhekani Buthelezi, a UNIZULU lecturer in musical theatre, drew on the deeply performative traditions of African societies. His reflections reinforced the need to reframe curricula to honour and advance African creativity within scholarly spaces.From MUT, Ms Mbali Mkhize, Senior Director for Marketing and Communications, shared how strategic communication can serve as a tool for institutional advocacy and public scholarship. She urged universities to tell their own stories in ways that affirm African agency, dignity and excellence.Dr Divinia Jithoo, DUT%u2019s International Education Specialist, closed the session by positioning Ubuntu as both a philosophical anchor and an operational framework for internationalisation. Her input highlighted the need for collaborative, humanising models of partnership that centre African voices and priorities. Her remarks tied directly to DUT%u2019s commitment to ethical leadership and engagement as core values of ENVISION 2030.A student panel called: Student Reflections: Mobility, Belonging and the Borders Within was chaired by Benjamin Aye Simon, a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Health Sciences at DUT. It unpacked the realities of intra-African mobility through deeply lived reflections and brought together emerging scholars from DUT, UKZN and UNIZULU, each offering personal insights into navigating identity, policy and belonging within the African higher education space.The cultural performances offered a symphony of tradition and youthful energy, evoking rituals of the past and dreams of the future.A student enterprise exhibition was showcased in partnership with DUT%u2019s INNOBIZ Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship that revealed a new generation of young Africans who are no longer waiting to be invited into the future; they are building it.Food exhibitions told an ancestral story through taste, texture and scent across the exhibition hall. DUT%u2019s Department of Consumer Sciences: Food and Nutrition and the Department of Biomedical Sciences, as well UNIZULU offered a multisensory, research-driven experience that transformed indigenous ingredients into food futures.DUT%u2019s Department of Consumer Sciences: Food and Nutrition%u2019s live demonstration, Plating Up Change, was a 30-minute culinary performance that fused together knowledge, heritage and innovation. The surrounding exhibition, curated by Dr Nokuthula Vilakazi, Dr Evonne Singh, Noxolo Blose and Zakithi Mhlongo, featured laminated recipe cards, nutritional fact sheets and an interactive question and answer space where traditional knowledge met applied science.DUT%u2019s Department of Biomedical Sciences%u2019 exhibit, prepared and hosted by both academic staff and students, offered tasters of cuisine not just from South Africa, but from across the continent.UNIZULU%u2019s Department of Consumer Sciences, in collaboration with the Department of Biomedical Sciences, also offered an experiential tasting grounded in indigenous African food science.As the day drew to a close, Dr Jithoo reminded attendees that the work is only beginning. She urged universities to not only celebrate Africa Day but to use it as an annual checkpoint for institutional alignment with continental agendas, for reaffirming commitments to intra-African partnerships, and for listening more attentively to the students, artists and entrepreneurs shaping the continent%u2019s future.Sinamile Sithole/Nonhle Mdlalose/Philile MbamaliDurban University of Technology 44