About - SAGTA

The Southern African Geography Teachers’ Association (SAGTA) was born out of a conversation with Candida Mannozzi from the American Association of Geographers (AAG) at a conference I attended in Ethiopia. Candida, together with Sives Govender from Environmental Information Systems Africa (EIS-Africa) did an audit of the feasibility of such an association and invested their time and expertise. Candida offered AAG membership to SAGTA members and Sives let us use his association’s resources until SAGTA had the magic fifty members signed up to stand on our own two feet. SAGTA would like to honour both Candida and Sives and we welcome them to our Geography virtual wall of fame.

On 25 September 2014, at the Winelands to Whale Coast Geography Conference, we arranged a conference call with the AAG to launch SAGTA. Here we signed on our founding members and from then it has been a journey of finding synergies, partnerships and projects that would best meet the needs of our members. SAGTA is run by volunteers who are passionate about Geography and Education. Here I must also honour Vusi Masuku who tragically passed away from COVID-19 on the 13th January 2021. Vusi was one of the founding committee members and his advice, wisdom and friendship will forever be missed. Also the notorious Tony Hambly (RIP) who presented at our first official conference in Pietermaritzburg in 2015 where we met for two days to formalise the association.

SAGTA has funded the MapDownloader, PrepShare, webinars, visitorships, conferences and our new academic Journal, the Journal of Geography Education in Africa. JoGEA is now accredited by the DHET (and appears on the South African List of Approved Academic Journals). Join SAGTA today to receive these benefits and more. Watch this space for more exciting projects for our members.

Written by - Bridget Fleming