A South African lecturer has clinched a major international research award for work that zeroes in on one of the toughest public service challenges at home: why housing delivery struggles to meet demand, and what it would take to fix it. University of Fort Hare (UFH) academic Brendan Boyce was named Overall Best Scientific Paper winner at the third Pan African Symposium, held at the University of the District of Columbia in Washington DC from 23 to 28 June 2025.

The symposium, convened by the USA-Africa Collaborative with the Institute for Human Settlements Practitioners South Africa, brought together academics, practitioners and students from Africa, the United States, the Caribbean and Asia. More than 100 papers were presented, spanning affordable housing, urban planning, land use, climate resilience, and governance. Boyce’s work stood out for its direct focus on professionalising South Africa’s Human Settlements practice — an area often discussed in policy circles but rarely mapped with this level of precision.

His paper, drawn from his PhD research, is titled “Prospects, Constraints and Opportunities to Professionalisation of Human Settlements Practice in South Africa.” It offers a critical review of the literature on public sector professionalisation, then applies systems thinking, the theory of constraints and the institutionalisation of professional practices to the country’s housing ecosystem. In plain terms, it asks: where exactly do things get stuck, and which interventions could unblock the system?

“I am honoured to have my research recognised on an international stage. It is a privilege to represent UFH globally and to showcase the research excellence emerging from African universities,” Boyce said after receiving the award.

Inside the award-winning study

South Africa’s Human Settlements sector is expected to do a lot at once: secure land, plan communities, fund projects, manage contracts, build safely, and support families who move into new homes. When any link in that chain falters — skills, procurement, oversight, or data — delivery slips. Boyce’s study examines those links as a single system, not isolated tasks.

Systems thinking treats housing delivery as a network with feedback loops: a delay in environmental approvals can slow procurement; weak project management can inflate costs; poor data can hide early warnings. The theory of constraints pushes further, asking which bottleneck most limits the whole system. Remove that constraint, and the entire pipeline speeds up.

Using those lenses, Boyce’s paper reviews current policy frameworks and practice standards, then identifies leverage points where professionalisation could have the biggest payoff. The work doesn’t chase a silver bullet. It maps how roles, rules, competencies and culture interact — and where better standards and accountability could change outcomes.

Professionalisation, as set out in the study, is not only about qualifications. It includes agreed competencies for each role, accredited training pathways, continuous professional development (CPD), codes of ethics, recognized career ladders, and clear lines of authority. Crucially, it ties these to performance in the field: fewer project stoppages, faster approvals, safer builds, and communities that actually receive what was planned on paper.

Boyce’s review considers recurring pain points in the sector — fragmented mandates between spheres of government, uneven technical capacity, contractor performance problems, weak project controls, and high staff turnover in critical posts. By lining these up against the existing policy environment, he tests where professional practice standards and better institutional design could realistically stick.

Why this matters now

Housing backlogs and informal settlement growth have become defining urban issues across South Africa. Provinces face pressure to upgrade informal settlements, deliver serviced sites, and support social housing — all while budgets tighten and construction costs rise. In that context, professionalisation is not window dressing. It is about building a reliable operating system for delivery.

Events like the Pan African Symposium also highlight something else: solutions are increasingly co-created across regions. Urbanisation patterns in Lagos, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Kingston and Washington DC differ, but practitioners face familiar hurdles — land availability, finance gaps, climate risks, and whether institutions are fit for purpose. Sharing approaches to standards, accreditation, and practice oversight has real value.

The UFH win also signals a quiet shift in where policy ideas come from. African universities aren’t just case study sites; they are shaping frameworks and tools — in this case, applying systems methods to one of the public sector’s hardest mandates. That matters for training the next generation of settlement planners, engineers, and program managers.

So what would professionalisation look like in action? Boyce’s analysis points to practical levers that institutions can pull, often in parallel:

• Competency frameworks for each role — with clear entry requirements and progression routes.
• Accredited training and CPD linked to real project needs (procurement, contract management, data, safety, community engagement).
• Standard operating procedures from planning to handover, with digital records and audit trails.
• Independent oversight for complex procurements and contractor performance.
• Career paths that reward technical depth, not just seniority or rotation.
• Communities of practice that share templates, lessons and checklists across provinces and municipalities.

Those levers only matter if they show up in results. The study points to measurable outcomes that departments and municipalities can track:

• Shorter approval and procurement timelines for standard project types.
• Lower rate of contract variations and cost overruns.
• Improved project completion rates, with fewer stoppages.
• Consistent compliance with building and safety standards.
• Reduced vacancy rates in critical technical roles — and better retention.
• Better beneficiary experience, from allocation transparency to post-occupation support.

The symposium setting gave the research a broader audience. Sessions focused on climate-resilient housing, materials innovation, housing finance, and the politics of land. In that mix, one thread cut across many panels: promising policies stumble without the skills, standards and institutions to deliver them. That is the problem space Boyce’s work tries to organise — not with slogans, but with a map of the system and the choke points that matter most.

For UFH, the award is also a nod to the university’s Human Settlements programme, which trains students for exactly these roles — policy analysis, programme design, project delivery, and monitoring. For practitioners in government and the private sector, the research offers a framework they can test against their own pipelines and governance structures.

The organisers are expected to compile proceedings from the event, which often serve as a reference point for ongoing collaboration. With the award in hand, Boyce’s study is likely to draw interest from departments and professional bodies exploring standards, accreditation and CPD models tailored to South Africa’s context.

Winning a prize does not fix a system. But it can sharpen the conversation. This paper asks blunt questions: Which part of the chain breaks first? Who is accountable for that break? What skill, standard, or oversight would keep it intact? Answer those, and the sector gets closer to a housing system that delivers at the speed and quality people deserve.