Welcome to the World of Debate Africa

Over the past 20 years debating has become of one of the premier pastimes in many African countries, much to the ignorance of mainstream media. The sport which draws thousands of young people to various tournaments across the continent, is gaining growing government support in SADC, West Africa and recently East Africa. The Zone has listed some of the premier competitions to attend if you want to become a debating expert through exposure to some of the greatest debate talent that this continent and the world has to offer.

Debating in Namibia
There are a host of local tournaments that take place every year to prepare students for competing in international tournaments. There is a schools regional debate championship that is held once all the regions have gone through the heats to select their regional teams, to fight it out for spots on the national team.
Besides the national heats that are organised in collaboration with various schools and teachers, there are other invitational debating tournaments that high school students can participate in.
The Namibian hosts its National Schools Debating Cup annually, with a planned roll-out programme to include schools nationwide. There will be local leagues (schools from same region) and National Cup (between schools from different parts of the country). It is open to all upper primary (Grades 5, 6 and 7), junior secondary (Grades 8, 9 and 10) and senior secondary (Grades 11 and12) across Namibia.

Unam Debating Society
The University of Namibia Debating Society (UDEBSO) has been considered a force to be reckoned with within the regional debate circuit, with many of the teams participating in various tournaments either reaching the final for a decade straight, to winning the Southern African Universities Debating Championship in Port Elizabeth in 2010.
The university also hosts the Unam Open which is one of the invitational tournaments that take place during the course of the year, arranged by Unam students and UDEBSO executive. The competition brings students from the three unions in the country together to battle it out for cash prizes and the acclaim of being one of the best debaters in the country.

NUST Debating Society
The NUST Debating Society is one of the more seasoned clubs in the country that has been performing exceptionally well at the SAUDCs as well as at the PAUDCs. The union has seen their members attend the World Universities Championships in countries like Germany and Malaysia. They still hold training programmes.

IUM Debate Society
The International University of Management has one of the younger debating unions in the country, with membership fluctuating from year to year, with some of the debaters opting to join other debating fraternities to ensure individual participation. The union has debated in the PEPFAR Debates in the past, also taking part in the Unam Open; a debating tournament organised for local institutions to improve their skills before some of the major tournaments in the region.
Namcol Debate Championships
Namcol also has a debating tournament where students from various Namcol branches in the country come together to try their hand at the art of debating. The students are selected after they have been trained, and the tournament has been highly competitive in the past, with the students getting a grip of debating faster than they could be taught.

Pan-African Universities Debating Championships (PAUDC)
The Pan-African Universities Debate Championship is an annual debate and public speaking championship which sees the participation of various universities across Africa. The previous edition was hosted by the University of Limpopo in Polokwane, South Africa. It witnessed the participation of about 600 youth from universities of various African countries. The 8th edition championship is dubbed “Legon 2015”. The event is planned to have the participation of over 600 students from various universities across Africa which includes debaters, public speakers as well as adjudicators. In addition, a provision is made to include observers and volunteers who would be selected on the basis of the impact the championship is likely to make on them and the likelihood for them to contribute to the development of debate in their respective countries especially Ghana.
In summary, the event is designed to cultivate in the youth of Africa democratic leadership and qualities, improved civic knowledge and attitudes, volunteerism and public spiritedness, public-speaking skills, greater interest in current national and international affairs, and the practice of critical and objective analysis of public issues.

World Universities Debating
Championships (WUDC)
The World Universities Debating Championship (WUDC) is the world’s largest debating tournament, and one of the largest annual international student events in the world. It is a parliamentary debating event, held using either the British Parliamentary Debate format (involving four teams of two people in each debate) or the American Parliamentary Debate format (two teams of two people). Each year, the event is hosted by a university selected by the World Universities Debating Council. The tournament is colloquially referred to as “Worlds” and the winners of the open competition acknowledged as the “world champions”.
The most recent edition of the tournament took place in Thessaloniki in January 2016. The current World Champions are Bo Seo and Fanele Mashwama representing Harvard University. The English as a Second Language (ESL) competition was won by Mikee De Vega and Jason Dizon of De La Salle University, while National Technical University of Athens (Theodoros Ntounias and Maria Roussi) won the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) tournament.
The championship is usually held in the days following Christmas, since many of the institutions attending from the northern hemisphere where the championship originated take vacations at this time. Although many countries that do not celebrate Christmas have become participants at the competition, the timing has remained the same. In most recent years, the nine preliminary rounds of the tournament have been held over three days from 29 to 31 December, with the elimination rounds being held on 2 January and the grand finale on 3 January.
In recent years, the championship has varied from about 150 to 400 teams, depending on the capacity of the host institution. With judges and organisers, this involves 500 to 1 000 participants in all.
The competition involves nine preliminary rounds, which become “power-paired” as the tournament progresses, matching the strongest-performing teams against each other. Two teams form the “government” (“proposition” in the UK and North America) and two the “opposition” in each debate room. The process of scoring and pairing these teams is known as “tabbing”. The scoring of teams is done by judges, most of whom are students or former students from the competing institutions, who return “ballots” with their scores to the adjudication team, led by a Chief Adjudicator who is assisted by one or more deputies. The deputies are not members of the host institution.
The nine preliminary rounds are followed by a “break” at which the teams proceeding to elimination rounds are announced. This is traditionally done on New Year’s Eve, although this is subject to the timing of the tournament. In the current tournament format, the top 16 teams from the preliminary rounds proceed to the octo-final round. The teams ranked 17 - 48 also break into a partial double octo-final round, and the winning teams from this round join the teams ranked 1 - 16 in the octo-finals. While preliminary rounds are usually judged by up to three judges, the break rounds are judged by panels of five, and the finals by panels of seven.
Separate breaks are announced for the English-as-a-second language (ESL) and English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) team competitions, for the individual public speaking competition, and the “World Masters” tournament which is participated in by judges (most of whom are no longer students) representing the countries where they studied or of which they are citizens. In addition, a comedy competition is also open to all participants.

Southern African Universities
Debating Championships (SAUDC)
The Southern African National University Debating Championships (SANUDC) is an annual event that takes place over a week during the winter break for universities in July. It is a period where all South African higher education institutions, along with other SADC institutions from Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Swaziland meet to debate issues facing society ranging from economic, philosophical and political topics.
This tournament is the second biggest on the continent after the Pan-African Universities Debating Championships, and offers a level of competition that has impressed even some of the best debating fraternities in the world. This event, now in its 20th year, is one of the largest student-organised, not-for-profit events in Africa, and it will be hosted at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), Bellville Campus, in Cape Town. The tournament runs from 29 June to 7 July 2016.

Keith Vries