It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to this first Science, Technology and Innovation Summit. I am most grateful that you have responded positively to my invitation to share your thoughts, commitment and passion so that we can unleash the great potential of our country as it makes its way into the global knowledge economy.
I am particularly grateful that our Honourable Deputy President has made time to be with us and to open this summit.
Albert Einstein perhaps best describes the intentions of this summit with these words: “To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science”.
In 2010, a Ministerial Review Committee was appointed to respond to a few critical questions: Is South Africa's science, technology and innovation landscape ready to meet the needs of the country? Is the country making optimal use of its existing strengths in the National System of Innovation? Is the country positioned to respond rapidly to a changing global context and to meet the knowledge needs of the country in the coming 10 to 30 years?
The Review was also asked to identify what was required from the state in order to ensure an adequate and growing investment in science, technology and innovation that would deliver a sustained and durable knowledge-based economy; facilitate the increased involvement of key stakeholders; and advance the national objectives of economic growth, jobs, better health, quality education and responsiveness to the needs of the most marginalised.
The Review Committee expressed concern at the inadequate levels of coordination, prioritisation and coherent agenda-setting for science, technology and innovation by government, business, academia and civil society.
One of the key recommendations of the Review Committee was the establishment of a high-level, multi-stakeholder body that would be responsible for coordination and coherence in the National System of Innovation (NSI).
The convening of this summit must therefore be seen as initiating the process of achieving this improved coordination in our system exploring ways of addressing deficiencies in the system and, in so doing, advance the transition of the South African economy from a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based one, that makes the best use of the science, technology and innovation.
A logical start may then be to interrogate the concept of a National System of Innovation which seems to have little currency outside the ranks of academics and government officials. I have yet to hear an inventor, innovator or entrepreneur refer to the NSI. Yet the debate on what is needed to promote, support and encourage innovation is livelier today than it has ever been. So the fundamental question may be: how do we stimulate an attitude of innovation in our departments, our institutions, our businesses and, particularly, in our people?
What does the NSI look like now and how far have we come since 1994?
You, who have been invited to participate in this summit, need no introduction to science, technology and innovation. Nevertheless, it is important to remind ourselves that we have come a long way since 1994. Our conversation here is intended to help us make a quantum leap forward from where we are today. Our challenge is to perfect the platform from which the creativity of our people leads not only to new ideas but to the translation of these ideas into new products and practices that will improve the social and economic well-being of our country.
We are fully cognisant of the fact that innovative ideas will emanate from research and development funded by the state and the private sector and carried out in our higher education institutions, science councils and private sector laboratories.
We are also aware of the international data that demonstrates that, in fact, more innovations emanate from communities striving to improve their lot and businesses wanting to improve their profitability than from organised research and development activities. Some of these innovations can be truly revolutionary, but many more will lead to no more than modest incremental improvements.
Our challenge is to ensure that we make a concerted, deliberate and sustained effort to enhance the efficacy of the National System of Innovation, with the buy-in of all the players.
An old aphorism about planning a journey advises that the best way to arrive at your destination is to know where you are starting from.
The 1996 White Paper on Science and Technology opted to adopt the concept of a national system of innovation as opposed to a national science and technology system. This deliberate choice was intended to signal the inherent inseparability of the national science and technology research and development agenda from the generation, acquisition and application of knowledge to advance the economic and social development agenda of the nation. While the White Paper emphasised from the outset that the connections and relationships between the various elements of the landscape would be what qualified the system to be called a national system of innovation.
In 2008 we introduced the Ten-Year Innovation Plan to provide a basis for longer term planning and to be more focussed in our work. Subsequently a number of more detailed strategies have been, are being, finalised including a comprehensive human capital development strategy. We have made some progress in supporting the commercialisation of innovations through the Technology Innovation Agency. Centres of competence have been created to enhance public and private sector collaboration in research and development.
The Ministerial Review Committee echoed a finding of the 2007 Report of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that business, both large and small, was not sufficiently involved in building the National System of Innovation. More importantly, the report further concluded that the NSI was not making the contribution it should to poverty reduction and broadening inclusion in the mainstream economy.
Knowledge generation as the foundation of the NSI
The National Development Plan sees higher education as the major driver of the information and knowledge systems, and of course higher education institutions constitute a key component of the national system of innovation.
The NDP sees universities performing three key functions in developing a nation. First, they educate and train people with high-level skills for both the public and the private sectors. Secondly, they are the dominant producers of new knowledge, and they critique information and find new local and global applications for existing knowledge. And thirdly, universities set norms and standards, and determine the curriculum, languages, knowledge, ethics and philosophy underpinning a nation's knowledge capital.
Quality higher education needs excellence in science and technology, just as quality science and technology needs excellent higher education. While universities are central to knowledge production, research and development also happens in many other places, like the science councils, state-owned enterprises and industry.
Human capital development
A key component of a viable National System of Innovation is the availability of skilled and creative scientists, technologists and innovators. Several interventions have been introduced over the last few years to address these key requirements for a successful NSI.
One of these is the increased postgraduate support offered, with increased bursary values and more students being supported. An indicator of the success of this support, is the fact that the number of doctoral graduates produced annually increased by 36% from 2008, to 1576 in 2011. Indications are that 1 700 doctorates were obtained in the 2012 academic year. This number may still be way below the 5000 doctoral graduates per annum envisaged by the National Development Plan, but the recent trend is highly encouraging.
An important intervention has been the Centres of Excellence programme, which has seen the establishment of nine physical or virtual centres of research which concentrate existing capacity and resources to enable researchers to collaborate across disciplines and institutions on long-term projects that are locally relevant and internationally competitive. Besides these nine centres, we support important organisations such as the National Institute for Theoretical Physics and the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology.
The department published a call in April for five new centres of excellence, which are to be established before the end of April 2014, making a total of 14 CoEs.
The CoEs can be described as a successful innovation within the system of innovation. They have nurtured an impressive number of young scientists, significantly increased publications in peer-reviewed journals, and leveraged funds from external sources.
The South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARCI) focuses on the established research community to support increased research and innovation outputs as well as strengthening the human capital development pipeline for the next generation of researchers and emerging researchers. The SARCI project began with 21 chairs in 2006 and has grown to 152 chairs in diverse disciplines across the natural sciences, engineering, humanities and social sciences.
Each of these research chairs supervises, on average, three times the number of honours, master's and doctoral students supervised by other established researchers rated by the NRF or holding research grants. This is partly because each research chair has more than five times the number of postdoctoral fellows of other established researchers.
The DST-NRF Internship Programme, has seen a total of 1 543 interns placed since 2005, 60% have found employment, and 23% returned to study further with the support of the department.
Connecting knowledge generation to economic development
One of the government's main post-1994 goals is to shift South Africa's over-reliance on our resources base to value-adding and knowledge-intensive activities. The DST’s initial interventions have concentrated on the exploitation of new knowledge for economic development around the mining and resource sector and the bio-economy sector. I would like to briefly highlight a few examples.
Beneficiation: Sector-specific initiatives in mining and mineral resources
The South African Minerals to Metals Research Initiative aims to promote sustainable development of the South African minerals processing industry through the development of globally competitive, innovative technology, driven by people with world-class skills.
This is a coordinated effort including:
- a joint venture between industry and the DST to provide funding;
- emerging academics and researchers at South African universities, with industry mentoring to researchers and postgraduate students;
- identified projects of real interest to industry members.
Fluorochemical Expansion Initiative
South Africa has one of the largest confirmed fluorspar reserves in the world and is the third largest exporter. However, South Africa is only beneficiating 5% of its annual production. So while we supply over 10% of global fluorspar requirements, we earn less than 0,5% of the world's $16 billion per annum revenue.
The Fluorochemical Expansion Initiative is driven by the DST and the Department of Trade and Industry, and is aimed at developing South Africa's fluorochemical industry through increased local beneficiation of the country's fluorspar reserves. The initiative is aligned to broader national programmes like the National Industrial Policy Framework, the Advanced Manufacturing Technology Strategy and the Minerals Beneficiation Strategy.
Beneficiation: Titanium
South Africa also has significant titanium ion reserves. We are planning to establish a centre of competence as a platform to integrate upstream research and development and downstream supply chain development in order to exploit the market opportunities in the industry. The focus at the moment is on new, proprietary South African technologies for primary titanium metal powder production at a substantially lower cost than the current supply of powder.
Beneficiation: Platinum
South Africa has the largest platinum group metal (PGM) reserves, which constitute almost 75% of the world known reserves of PGMs. Platinum is the most effective catalyst that is used for the conversion of hydrogen into electricity in fuel cells. The department established three Centres of Competence at leading Universities and Science Councils to drive the research and development efforts in the field of hydrogen and fuel cells. The Centres have made significant progress and have successfully attracted the interest from private sector partners who are mostly interested in commercialising the Centres research and development outcomes.
Connecting Knowledge generation to industry needs.
Post-Harvest Innovation (PHI)
Our initiative with the deciduous fruit industry stands out as a classical case of industry, government, academia and science councils collaborating to enhance the competiveness of our fruit exports. The Post-Harvest Innovation Programme was first launched in 2007 and was renewed in 2011.
It has funded 54 research projects in the fresh fruit sector to address post-harvest issues such as product control during transit, packaging, non-invasive fruit quality assessment, and post-harvest disease control.
General purpose instruments
These are all good examples of the kind of partnerships we would like to see grow and further develop beyond this summit. There are many, many examples of scientific breakthroughs and achievements in these almost two decades of democracy that we can rightfully feel proud of as a country. But let us not forget that the generation of new knowledge, the development of scientists, technologists and technicians, and the application of new knowledge to economic development are all underpinned by the capacity to undertake research and development.
Research and development require investment from both the public and private sectors are measured using general expenditure on research and development as a percentage of GDP. This has declined over the past three years, putting us out of step with several of our developing country partners. Reversing this trend will require much closer cooperation between the public and private sectors.
Various instruments have been developed to support our national innovation push across all economic and social spheres.
Research and development tax incentive
Research and development tax incentives were introduced in 2006 to encourage the private sector to invest in R&D. The initial uptake of this incentive was less than we had hoped, so, taking into account criticisms of the instrument itself, the incentive was modified by the Taxation Laws Amendment Act in October 2012.
This led to applications from 188 new companies between October 2012 and June 2013. This was in addition to the 623 existing companies that have continued to use the incentive. The significant increase in applications caught the Department by surprise and additional resources have had to be secured to deal with the increase and the backlog that has resulted.
The Technology Innovation Agency (TIA)
The Technology Innovation Agency is also a relatively new institution, created in 2008 with a mandate to "support the state in stimulating and intensifying technological innovation in order to improve economic growth and the quality of life of all South Africans by developing and exploiting technological innovations".
About R1.8 billion was invested by the National Treasury in the first four years of the existence of this agency. The Ministerial Review Report of 2012 had described the statutory establishment of the TIA and the companion National Intellectual Property Management Office (NIPMO) as "the most ambitious recent interventions in the NSI". The Review Report recommended that an external review of the TIA be carried out to assess its "fitness for purpose".
A review of TIA was conducted earlier this year, and the new Board has now been tasked with the implementation of a number of these recommendations.
What we have learned and what needs to be done
Innovation is as much about networks and partnerships as it is about creative thinking.
In reflecting on what we have learned in these two decades of democracy and what needs to be done, the words of the great inventor, entrepreneur and innovator, Henry Ford, may help is. This is what he said: “Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.”
One thing we have learnt is that we need to promote the emergence of cross-sectoral research and innovation projects that benefit different aspects of a related industry. Secondly, we need to identify and fund R&D in those industries that are most likely to meet our economic and developmental needs. Thirdly, we must be prepared to make additional resources available as proven R&D begins to reach commercial and manufacturing potential.
Fourth, we must maintain a constant focus on developing new and emerging young researchers. And finally, we must ensure that knowledge and expertise is disseminated and is widely available.
This summit is an opportunity for key stakeholders to explore ways in which science, technology and innovation can play a significant role in, and make a meaningful contribution towards, realising the vision 2030 in the National Development Plan, and the objectives of the New Growth Path and the Industrial Policy Action Plan.
This summit will have been successful if we are able to leave, not only with a shared understanding of the need for greater coherence and coordination in the NSI and between the public and private sector, but with concrete proposals on ways to achieve this.
Concluding remarks
Friends, we are not here to anticipate or prepare for failure. Quite the opposite, we have every reason to be confident that in our joint commitment to the achievement of an innovation infused economy and society we will achieve great successes. But, innovation by definition implies doing new things, smart things, some untested things, and inherent in this is overcoming the fear of failure. To quote Henry Ford once again:
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
Innovation can be described as the introduction of new or improved products and services into a market (economic or social). Innovation goes beyond creativity and involves taking ideas from their creation right through to commercialisation. A National System of Innovation, as we have traditionally depicted it, runs the risk of ignoring the fact that innovation, as I have already said, is often the outcome of collaborative networks.
I would like to ask you to use the special opportunity provided by this summit to grapple with some of the key questions that may enable us to promote scientific, technological and innovative solutions to our Vision 2030.
Does our STI architecture provide the environment for new products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas to meet the societal or economic needs and aspirations of our people? Do we need to define the mandates and expectations of our institutions and councils more clearly? Can we be more explicit about the distinctive roles, positions, and performance of the components of the NSI?
During the next day and a half we will have an opportunity to hear a range of perspectives on science, technology and innovation in our country and to apply the intellectual rigour to considering ways in which government, business, academia and civil society can participate and build a more coherent and coordinated system of innovation.
Having considered all the above, let us be reminded of the reasons for wanting to create an environment which stimulates science, technology and innovation. In this week of Madiba’s 95th birthday, I can think of no better words than his own – “My Government's commitment to create a people-centred society of liberty binds us to the pursuit of the goals of freedom from want, freedom from hunger, freedom from deprivation, freedom from ignorance, freedom from suppression and freedom from fear. These freedoms are fundamental to the guarantee of human dignity. They will therefore constitute part of the centrepiece of what the government will seek to achieve.”
Thank you.
