IFES EPSA conference postponed till June 2024 allowing students and guests more time to finalise their travel plans.

The Southern African regional students’ missions conference, Masiye Conference planned to take place in Johannesburg, South Africa between the 9-15 December 2023 has been postponed given its current slow registration count.

Its new date has been set to June 2024, a time-period which organisers state should be equally accommodative towards students given the holiday period that follows the June examinations.

With special guest, Phillip Ndoro – a Zimbabwean-born global missionary now based in Mexico and Latin America – the Masiye Conference seeks to empower the next generation of global missionary workers. This is done by understanding how to adapt to the various circumstances associated with spreading the Gospel in unfamiliar environments and navigating around the social-political challenges of our everyday world.

The conference seeks to host 400 delegates across over 12 Southern African countries. 

These delegates are each tertiary-level students, alumni and adult guests or high school learners affiliated to the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES), an international student ministry organisation linking national student movements in over 170 countries. The conference is currently the first physical meeting unifying the EPSA (English and Portuguese-speaking Africa) movement following the global COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 and 2021 and shall be the third instalment of the mass gathering since its launch in 2017.

“We have seen a slow but steady growth in the re-gathering of students across the various student unions, following the pandemic. The Masiye Conference will be the ultimate highlight of rebuilding the work of student ministry in Southern Africa” says Nathan Theunis, the conference’s marketing coordinator.

“We therefore cannot wait to host this event and as such do understand that more time may be needed for travel arrangements from across the various nations” he adds.