rAge 2025 Was Big, and Eduvos’ Vision Was Bigger

There is something about rAge Expo that always feels like walking into controlled chaos. This year was no exception. The Fourways Mall rooftop hosted the entire spectacle, and while the placement made sense for space, it came with one unavoidable reality. It was scorching. The heat rose off the concrete like an in-game fire trap. Thankfully, the organisers scattered portable fans across the floor, which quickly became the unofficial heroes of the weekend.

Still, as soon as you walked through the doors, the energy made you forget about the weather. You were pulled into a familiar blend of flashing screens, crazy costumes, and excited chatter. On my way through the maze of stands, I bumped into Carly Nel from Mettlestate. I also crossed paths with the teams from Sony, LEGO and Nintendo. And somewhere between all the gaming rigs and anime merch, there were even a few cars on display because of course there were.

But I was not at rAge just to explore. This year’s goal was different. I was there to spend time with Eduvos and to experience first-hand how their esports footprint has evolved. For an institution better known for its higher education offering, their presence inside a gaming expo might surprise some. But once you understand the strategy behind it, everything clicks into place.

Eduvos has been coming to rAge for several years now, steadily expanding, iterating, and embedding themselves in the gaming community. What began as a simple stand has grown into a true showcase of what future skills education can look like. Their partnership with RGB Gaming has become one of the most intentional investments in South African student esports. It is not performative. It is not reactive. It is structured, thoughtful, and rooted in the idea that gaming can be a meaningful pathway into careers that extend far beyond entertainment.

I spoke to Jaco Sauer first, the co-founder of RGB Gaming, and he spoke with the calm certainty of someone who believed wholeheartedly in the work he was doing. He explained that RGB Gaming had partnered with Eduvos on its esports journey and said that Eduvos was “one of the very few higher educational institutions that are investing into bringing future skills in a fun way to students that they want to interact with”. For him, the heart of it all was simple. “It’s really about the investment in the idea of providing students with this opportunity that they’re not getting elsewhere, in a setting like rAge, which is absolutely amazing.”

When I asked him what that partnership looked like outside the weekend buzz of the expo, he told me that what RGB did with Eduvos sat inside a much broader future skills strategy. “One of the components is esports, but there’s other components. For example, the game jams, game development, game design. Obviously, Eduvos also offers their formal qualifications in these activities, specifically for students who would want to go into that career direction.” He added that the partnership “perfectly aligns with that strategy as well”.

I then spoke to Brent Davids, the national coordinator for sport, social recreation and social houses at Eduvos. I asked him whether gaming was something that could one day offer scholarships in the same way traditional sports have always done. He nodded without hesitation. “Oh yeah, definitely. I think that’s something that’s part of the plan going forward. To introduce some sort of diversity system or structure, especially for students coming out of high schools to help them financially also, but to also open that door for bursaries.” It was not something abstract or theoretical for him. It was concrete. “That’s something in the pipeline that’s going to come hopefully in the next five years.”

And finally, I spoke to Xander Fritz, Eduvos’ esports coordinator, who handled everything from Comic Con Africa to rAge. When I asked what had changed over the years Eduvos had attended the expo, he gave a smile that said he had seen the evolution up close. He told me, “The way we started, we had just a stand like this in 2022. And then we were introduced to RGB Gaming, and they said, ‘Hey, you guys want to start esports, because it’s international footprinted, and not just like a cricket team, you can have players all over.’” Their answer had been yes, and that was where it all began.

He walked me through the years as if replaying them. “Our first Comic Con was 2023 and we had a very small stage with the projector screen, and that’s how we ran it, and we had about 15 students-ish 20, and then it just grew from there.” Growth was constant. “So last year’s rAge we did about 40 students, this year I’m expecting 50 students to come and play. So tomorrow is our tournament. I have about 50 students competing for Overwatch 2 and they’re going to be playing team versus team basically the whole day. And so we’re taking over that entire stage tomorrow.”

But for Xander, the stand was about more than tournaments. It was a gateway into the Eduvos community. “We use the stand as a kind of entry into getting people to sign up for Eduvos because they come in. We want them to see we’re not just an education institute. We also focus on gaming and everything and we push that gaming isn’t just playing around. It can be educational, it can be constructive, and it can be very motivational for students.”

He explained the logic beautifully. “We don’t have a rugby field at every campus. But I can have esports at every campus. I can build that community to get them to feel that they’re not just sitting at their PC. They can make friends, especially when they’re studying and they need a break instead of them just running TikTok. I say, hey, get online. There’s players from other campuses studying exactly the same course as you and both building their community, talking to each other.”

By the time the three of them finished speaking, the story had shaped itself. Eduvos was not experimenting. They were not dipping a toe into gaming culture. They were building a complete ecosystem that connected qualifications to real digital skills, competition to community, and recreation to motivation. In a space as loud and chaotic as rAge, their purpose stood out clearly.

Listening to all three of them, one thing becomes clear. Eduvos is not dabbling in esports. They are building an ecosystem. One that blends academic pathways with real world digital skills, and one that acknowledges that students do not exist in a vacuum. They want friends, they want community, and they want to feel seen. Eduvos is providing that space.