Africa's largest university has entered the aviation age. The University of South Africa, better known as UNISA, announced on 19 March 2026 that it has acquired a 20-hectare airport to be used as a training and research facility. Unisa is the first institution of higher learning on the African continent to acquire an airport facility.
What Happened at the 19 March 2026 Media Briefing
The announcement came at the tail end of a wide-ranging media briefing held at UNISA’s Muckleneuk Campus in Pretoria. Vice-Chancellor Professor Puleng LenkaBula had called journalists together to review the university’s performance over the five years from 2021 to 2025 — a period that included the disruption of COVID-19, sustained pressure on higher education funding, and an ongoing governance debate.
The briefing covered ground well beyond aviation. LenkaBula presented a university that had, by its own account, significantly strengthened its academic and financial standing. The numbers offered were striking.
| 60,000+ Graduates produced in 2025 alone | 550+ Doctoral outputs in 2025 | 42.7% Rise in research output (per DHET) | R24bn+ Institutional reserves, up from R9bn |
Only at the close of the briefing did the aviation story emerge, under the heading.
The sky is no longer the limit
The airport facility is located at the outskirts of Pretoria East, in Tshwane. Professor Boitumelo Senokoane told journalists that the acquired airport would allow UNISA students to apply their studies in practice and develop skills that are in active demand across the aviation and engineering sectors. LenkaBula framed it as a first for a South African university, and for the African continent, and said the facility is intended to support aviation, aeronautics, drone technology, and digital systems. An official launch is expected between April and May 2026.
“This airport will give our students a unique opportunity to apply their studies in practice and gain skills that are in high demand in the aviation and engineering industries,” said
Professor Boitumelo Senokoane, Executive Director of the university’s Department of Institutional Advancement.
From Colonial College to Africa’s Largest University
To understand why UNISA acquiring an airport is significant, it helps to understand a brief history of UNISA.
1873
The University of the Cape of Good Hope was established as one of the earliest examining universities in the British Empire. It awards degrees but does not teach; students study independently and sit central examinations.
1916
The South Africa Act led to the creation of the University of South Africa as a federal examining body. Teaching functions are gradually separated from residential institutions such as the University of Pretoria and the University of the Witwatersrand.
1946
UNISA is reconstituted as a fully independent, teaching university, the first in the world to offer university education entirely by correspondence. This places it more than two decades ahead of the Open University in the United Kingdom, which is often cited as the pioneer of distance learning.
1971
UNISA becomes the first South African university to enrol students of all races, a meaningful but limited act of resistance in the apartheid era, driven by the logic that correspondence study did not require physical integration.
2004
UNISA merges with Technikon SA and absorbs the distance education programmes of Vista University, creating a single Open Distance Learning institution with more than 200,000 students, at the time one of the largest universities in the world by enrolment.
2020s
Under Vice-Chancellor Puleng LenkaBula, UNISA pursues what it calls a comprehensive open distance e-learning model, expanding digital delivery, building research capacity, and identifying ten catalytic niche areas, including aviation and aeronautical studies, to drive applied innovation.
Today, UNISA enrols more than 400,000 students, making it one of the largest universities on earth by headcount. Its student body is spread across South Africa and more than 130 countries. The vast majority study at a distance without ever setting foot on a campus.
That context makes the airport acquisition all the more striking: it is a physical, infrastructure-heavy investment by an institution that has historically operated without it.
Why Aviation?
For at least two years before the March 2026 announcement, UNISA had been systematically building what it describes as an aviation ecosystem around its designated niche of aviation and aeronautical studies.
The university has hosted a General Aviation Indaba, participated in aviation expos, co-organised an aerotropolis symposium, and perhaps most visibly run the Drone Divas programme, a skills initiative that has trained women in drone piloting, drone maintenance, and related technical fields. This last initiative drew international attention as a model for widening access to emerging technology skills in Africa.
The South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) has been clear that unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) training in South Africa remains in its infancy. ICAO’s own workforce projections show that global aviation will need millions of new skilled professionals in the coming decade. South Africa’s transport minister acknowledged in 2025 that the cost of aviation training remains a major barrier for young people in developing countries. A university-owned aviation facility, one explicitly positioned as an open-access training environment, could chip away at that barrier if it delivers on its mandate.
UNISA has identified aviation and aeronautical studies as one of ten catalytic niche areas, meaning it has dedicated institutional strategy, staff recruitment, and now physical infrastructure to building capacity in this field. The airport is the most visible output of a multi-year commitment, not a one-off announcement.
Beyond the Headlines
Strip away the record-breaking framing, and what remains is a genuinely interesting policy move.
UNISA has, over its 150-year history, operated almost entirely without physical infrastructure in the traditional sense. Its model has always been that learning happens wherever the student is: in a rural homestead, a township, an office, or another country. Investing in a physical aviation training facility represents a meaningful philosophical shift – an acknowledgement that some of the skills Africa most urgently needs cannot be developed on a screen alone.
Aviation mechanics, aeronautical engineering, drone operations, air traffic management, and aircraft electronics are fields requiring hands-on, practical training. UNISA’s existing students in engineering, information technology, and transport management stand to benefit most directly. More broadly, if the facility functions as a genuinely open training environment with accessible pricing, it could begin to democratise access to aviation careers in a country where those careers have historically been available only to those who could afford expensive private training schools.
The story of UNISA and its new airport is, at its core, a story about what African higher education can look like when it takes applied knowledge seriously — not just degrees, but the infrastructure to make those degrees count in the real world.
