New dates for SCECSAL 2020 announced

Delegates from Malawi at SCECSSAL 2018 in Uganda

The SCECSAL 2020 Conference and Exhibition will be held on 8-12 February 2021 at the Safari Hotel and Conference Centre in Windhoek, Namibia, according to communication from the Namibia Information Workers Association and the SCECSAL Secretariat.

The SCANUL-ECS meeting will be on 7 February 2020.

The SCECSAL General Council, made up of Presidents/Chairpersons of SCECSAL Member Library and Information Associations from Botswana, Eswatini, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, approved the new dates on 24 March.

The conference was initially scheduled for 20-24 April 2020 but was postponed due to the global coronavirus pandemic.

Current registrations will remain valid for the conference on the new dates in 2021. Individuals wanting to cancel their registrations can do so, in writing, and will be charged 25% of the registration fees to cover administrative costs incurred thus far. Requests for refunds should be sent to Ms Ritva Niskala at rniskala@unam.na and copied to Mr. Wilheim Uutoni at wuutoni@unam.na and Dr. Chiku  M. Mchombu at cmchombu@unam.na.

NIWA will revise the conference budget and registration fees for 2021 to take into account the anticipated increase in costs due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.  The revised registration fees will be announced in August 2020.
More information will be made available on through the following digital platforms:

Conference website: http://scecsal2020.org/
SCECSAL Forum Blog: http://scecsal.blogspot.com/
Follow us: @SCECSAL

SCECSAL 2020 conference postponed

Some NIWA members at the official launch of the
SCECSAL 2020 conference  in Windhoek, Namibia on
4 February 2020

The XXIVth Standing Conference of Eastern, Central and Southern African Library and Information Association (dubbed SCECSAL 2020) scheduled for 20-24 April 2020 in Windhoek, Namibia has been postponed until further notice.

The Namibian Information Workers Associations (NIWA), the SCECSAL member Association that was to host the conference, took the decision to postpone the conference on 12 March.

The postponement of the conference comes after a meeting of the SCECSAL General Council on 11 March at which an unanimous decision was taken to postpone the meeting, following the review of on ongoing developments in the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) across the globe and the concerns expressed by the SCECSAL member Associations.

In related developments,  on 11 March the Namibia Minister of Health, Dr Kalumbi Shangula, advised Namibians to avoid face-to-face meetings with international participants to minimize chances of contracting covid-19, and later in the evening on the same day, the World Health Organization (WHO) Director General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, declared the covid-19 a pandemic, both events gave strong justification to the SCECSAL General Council’s proposal to postpone the conference.

NIWA and the SCECSAL Secretariat will monitor the developments and, in due course, propose the new dates for the conference.

SCECSAL member Associations that took part in the General Council meeting were:

• Eswatini Library Association (ESWALA)
• Library and Information Association of South Africa (LIASA)
• Library and Information Association of Zambia (LIAZ)
• Lesotho Library Association (LLA)
• Malawi Library Association (MALA)
• Namibia Library and Information Workers Association (NIWA)
• Tanzania Library Association (TLA)

For further information and clarifications, please contact the SCECSAL Secretariat at scecsal.secretariat@gmail.com.