About the institute
Founded by growers who were tired of technology that fails in the field.
HexTech Institute of Agricultural Technology is a private higher education institute in Stellenbosch, registered with the Department of Higher Education and Training, teaching agritech in English and Afrikaans.
Our story
A farm office in 2019, an institute in 2022.
HexTech began as a short-course programme run out of a farm office in the Hex Valley, teaching irrigation scheduling and sprayer calibration to farm managers. The demand was uncomfortable: there were plenty of agronomy graduates and plenty of software, and almost nobody trained at the point where the two meet.
In 2022 the institute opened on Vaalblom Road in The Ridge with two programmes, eleven lecturers and a borrowed packhouse line. Today there are ten NQF-registered programmes, three research chairs and a sensor network that runs across nine instrumented plots in the valley.
We remain deliberately small. Six hundred and forty students, one campus, one valley, and a standing agreement with industry that our graduates must be able to work unsupervised in a field within a week of arriving.
What we stand for
Three commitments we can be held to.
Water before yield
The valley is dry and getting drier. We teach water accounting as a first principle, not as a compliance chapter at the end of a manual.
Teach in the language people think in
Afrikaans and English carry equal status here: same content, same assessment, same lecturers. Nobody is asked to sound like somebody else.
Open the door wider
Two thirds of our students are the first in their family to study at this level. Bursaries, bridging modules and part-time study paths are part of the design, not a charity.
Governance & quality
Accredited, audited, and answerable to the valley.
HexTech is registered with the Department of Higher Education and Training as a private higher education institution and all programmes are accredited by the Council on Higher Education. External examiners from three South African universities moderate our final assessments.
- DHET registration: private higher education institution, 2022
- CHE accreditation for all ten programmes, NQF 5–9
- External moderation of final-year assessment
- Industry advisory board that interviews every graduate
- Annual graduate outcome survey, published in full
Visit us
72 Vaalblom Rd, The Ridge, Stellenbosch.
Twenty minutes from the Hex River Valley, five from the centre of town. The gate is open on weekdays from 07:30 to 17:00.