His Excellency, the President of South Africa, Mr. Cyril Ramaphosa, my fellow Ministers and Cabinet colleagues, honoured members of Parliament, representatives of foreign missions and South Africa’s diplomatic corps, Chairpersons of our STI entity boards, our esteemed guests from industry and civil society, Vice-chancellors from South African universities, Directors-General, officials, representatives from the media, ladies and gentlemen:
No modern society has scaled the heights of social progress without education, science and innovation. We know that nations such as Japan, South Korea and Germany have put science, technology and innovation (or STI for short) in the service of their societies, with commendable results. Hardly any of us are not aware of the role STI policy and strategy have played in the meteoric rise and spectacular growth of South Korean companies such as Samsung and Kia or German companies such as Siemens and Volkswagen.
In South Africa, when Cabinet approved the White Paper on STI 2019, an ambitious policy document aimed at creating an enabling environment for STI not only contribute to our national competitiveness on the global stage, but also to harness the benefits of STI for quality of life for our citizens. In 2022, Cabinet further approved the STI Decadal Plan to implement the White Paper. The philosophy governing the implementation of South Africa’s updated STI policy rests on two pillars.
In the first pillar, we are widening, deepening and transforming South Africa’s national system of innovation (NSI), building on past investments and achievements, to raise the scale and intensify the impact of our nation’s innovation capabilities. This we are doing through enhancing human capabilities, expanding the research system to increase knowledge creation in targeted areas, ensuring an enabling environment for innovation and its flow into the economy, and increasing both public and private investment in STI.
To illustrate: In ensuring that we are focused in education and skills development, we have recently, as part of the Innovation and Skills Compact, identified the critical skills needed to ensure effective implementation of the STI policies in line with the country’s Skills Masterplan.
Working with the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, we have also made significant progress in integrating STI into the planning for government as a whole. Part of this was to delineate the roles of various departments that have innovation-related mandates – to make sure that we build synergy among STI programmes across government, rather than waste resources through duplication. Crucially, we are phasing in the implementation of a Budget Coordination Mechanism for STI across government – this will make it easier for us to allocate resources to fund STI programmes at critical mass, for maximum impact.
Now, these kinds of initiatives cut across the policy domains of many departments, and therefore require a ‘whole-of-government’ approach to STI – coherence in overall policy design to enhance STI, coordination of STI-linked programmes, and pooling of scarce STI resources across departments to maximize impact. To assist in such collaborative initiatives, the President has set up an Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) on Science and Innovation representing all Ministries that have innovation-related mandates such as Trade, Industry and Competition; Higher Education and Training; Health, Agriculture; and Communication and Digital Technologies. In addition to coordinating innovation-enabling projects across government, the IMC will also advise on the allocation of resources to drive these programmes – in line with the National Treasury processes. Our policy states that over time, government departments will allocate an appropriate portion of their budgets to support South African STI.
The second pillar of our policy implementation relates to systematic focus on specific STI technical areas that are closely linked to our national priorities. Here I can mention areas such as energy and water security; the digital and circular economies; modernization of agriculture and manufacturing; and STI applications to improve the capability of the state and service delivery. And it is with pleasure that I can report significant progress in these technical STI programmes.
To illustrate, on South Africa’s journey to develop hydrogen as a source of clean, efficient and renewable energy, work is underway through the Hydrogen Society Roadmap to integrate hydrogen and fuel cell technologies in various sectors of the economy and to commercialise the technology. The technology has already been demonstrated for instance in 2020 during the Covid-19 Pandemic at the 1 Military Hospital to power a Covid ward. The technology was also applied to power scooters for the Post Office during 2019, as well as to power a forklift at Impala Platinum in 2016.
South Africa’s Hydrogen Valley is a planned integrated hydrogen ecosystem stretching from Mokopane in the north of the country where platinum-group metals are mined, to Durban where these are shipped. The main focus of the Hydrogen valley initiative is the conversion of heavy-duty diesel trucks from diesel to hydrogen and fuel cell power to reduce emissions. A hydrogen fuel cell truck was launched by Anglo American Platinum at Mogalakwena Mine in May 2022. This initiative is supported by Infrastructure South Africa for registration as a Strategic Infrastructure Project (SIP), and South African entities such as the Northwest University and Sasol are collaborating with Japanese partners on such hydrogen-related projects. The challenge now is to move from prototype to demonstration projects to full-scale commercialization.
Moving to food security, I am pleased that in October 2022, I, together with the Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, Minister Thokozile Didiza launched the Bio-Security Hub in collaboration with the University of Pretoria. The Bio-Security Hub will facilitate collaboration to prevent, reduce and manage crop and animal diseases as well as assuring food safety in South Africa.
This brings me to health, which is another area where we have made significant progress. As we know, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the South Africa population, like much of the developing world, to serious existential threats in 2020-21, being at the mercy of vaccine monopolies, vaccine imperialism and outright chauvinism. Our President played a key role in opening pathways to break this legacy with global efforts to secure Africa’s long-term vaccine security and challenged South Africa’s NSI to develop new pathways to ensure our nation’s health security. Towards this end, the World Health Organisation and the South African Medical Research Council have established a new mRNA vaccine technology transfer hub in the country, with similar hubs intended for other low and middle-income countries such as Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tunisia. Under its aegis, we have successfully developed a new mRNA COVID-19 vaccine candidate, AfriVac 2121, and its demonstration in animal models has been positive.
More broadly, and further to the President’s call, the DSI is currently rolling out a national Vaccine Innovation and Manufacturing Strategy (VIMS) built around the development of three additional (to the mRNA platform) vaccine platforms - Viral-like Particle (VLP), Inactivated Virus and Conjugated Vaccine platforms. Its aim is to develop South Africa’s vaccine innovation and manufacturing capabilities across the upstream and downstream parts of the value chain. The project is a national health priority that seeks to enhance access to affordable, quality vaccines and build capacity in the country and across the African continent for longterm to resilience.
It is further important to note that we see these technological investments as essential in not only the production of COVID-19 vaccines, but platforms to build vaccines, anti-viral therapies and diagnostic tools for other neglected diseases with a high burden in the region, such as Tuberculosis, HIV and Rift Valley Fewer.
Moving to the re-industrialisation of South Africa, and in particular the role that STI can play in the modernization of traditional sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing, and mining, I want to highlight the work we are doing under the umbrella of the Mandela Mining Precinct. This is a public-private partnership between the Department of Science and Innovation, and the Minerals Council of South Africa. It is aimed at revitalizing mining research and innovation in South Africa to ensure the sustainability of the South African mining industry. The aim is to improve the safety of mines as well as to introduce innovative technologies, as well as to understand how modernization will impact on people in the minerals sector.
While working to support STI-enabled re-industrialisation, we are also being strategic about using STI towards a more circular economy. We want to move away from our extractive-based economy, that has large throughputs of resources, and where we mostly export resources for further international beneficiation with limited resource returns into the economy. A circular approach where we recycle waste, and re-use and re-generate materials, has many applications in areas such as agriculture, mining, manufacturing, human settlements, and transport. Just in the transport sector, the circular approach will lead to improved productivity and competitiveness for business; reduced congestion; and reduced Green House Gas emissions. In the productive sectors, an STI-enabled Circular Economy approach also provides opportunities to develop local value-adding industries; and to compete in export markets that are placing increasingly stringent environmental requirements on products.
I also want to highlight some areas where we have made progress in using STI to enhance service delivery and improve the capacity of the state. For instance, we are exploiting our space technologies to collect satellite data and to use these to inform government decision making. To illustrate, through our space programme of Earth Observation for human settlements we can monitor informal settlements and housing development projects using high-resolution satellite imagery – thereby improving planning and identifying areas that are vulnerable to geo-environmental risks. More information, coupled with the data analytics capabilities provided by our STI entities, is leading to improved decision making and service delivery.
Municipalities and district authorities are the closest to citizens in delivering services. Building on our STI capabilities, we are working to improve the capabilities of these organs of state. Some of the programmes I am very excited about in this field are our Municipal Innovation Maturity Index and the Impact Simulator we have developed for the District Development Model (DDM). Through these STI applications, government can identify areas where additional resources need to be deployed, as well as monitor progress. There are so many other examples I could mention of how STI are being used to improve the capabilities of the state, but let me end by referring to our Schools ICT Readiness assessment to guide the deployment of ICTs in schools – which can contribute significantly to one of the urgent tasks of government, namely to improve access to quality education for all our learners.
This progress notwithstanding, there is still so much to do. And as the DG indicated in his opening remarks, the environment in which we are implementing our STI policy is challenging – not in the least because while we have to be competitive in an increasingly climate-sensitive global economy, we also need to address our long-standing domestic socio-economic challenges – unemployment, poverty and inequality, infrastructure and logistics constraints; and crime and corruption - to name the most pressing
And it is here where the value of partnering with the business sector, academia and civil society comes to the fore in moving South Africa forward. We have already seen how collaboration with these partners in the national system of innovation can multiply the resources and expertise of the government. Another example is the Innovation Fund, which is a public-private partnership aimed at supporting technology-based SMMEs through to commercialization. The private sector co-invests with government, and since 2020/21, 24 projects have been supported, attracting some R1.8bn of investment from the private sector. This is far too low for a country with our formidable STI assets.
And it is to nurture these partnerships that we have adopted a whole-of-society approach to innovation in our STI policy and established this Presidential STI Plenary. The aim of the Plenary is to enable the partnering of government with the NSI partners to support STI. The Plenary will reflect on progress in the STI system in general and specific major initiatives, and support funding for these. In the first instance the Plenary will be guided by the President himself. The STI Plenary will also be guided by the work done by the IMC on STI which I talked about earlier, as well as by the analysis and policy advice of the National Advisory Council on Innovation. In turn, it is expected that the Presidential Plenary will also play a role in high-level agenda setting for STI in South Africa. The Presidential STI Plenary is clearly a pivotal element of our STI governance architecture in South Africa.
I am therefore gratified to see all of our STI stakeholders and role-players represented here today. I am looking forward to not only further discussions on the issues we raise here today, but I will also be asking the DG and his team to follow up on these issues in the new year to ensure that we keep moving forward with our policy implementation.
Finally, let me state clearly that when we refer to STI, we refer to both natural and social sciences and humanities, for it is only possible to understand, let alone solve the major developmental and existential challenges of the 21st century through invoking the insights of trans-disciplinary knowledge.
And on that note, I now had back to the Programme Director. Thank you.
