Conference
17 September 2007
Thank you very much Fadl Hendricks, thank you very much to the biotechnology
community, locally, nationally and in the world. I want to particularly welcome
our international guests from the United Kingdom (UK), Germany, Spain and other
European countries as well as the United States of America (USA), Australia,
Zambia, Namibia, Botswana and other African countries.
I particularly also want to recognise our partners in the biotechnology
regional innovation centres who are our co-hosts here today.
I think that we are proud as South Africans to host a conference of this
nature in South Africa, as the continent of Africa is one of those exciting
places. We were surprised at the World Economic Forum when we looked at the
continent of Africa as a whole and found that as peace was being established,
we have been able to reduce the conflicts to about four or five conflicts that
remain on the continent.
In the last two years we have had 31 safe elections out of the 53 countries
on the continent of Africa. It means that parties who have been in power and
lost elections have given way to other parties and that presidents are
beginning to change with greater regularity than was the case before. So peace
has paved the way for democracy and more importantly, peace and democracy have
paved the way for economic growth. The truth of the matter is that, the average
growth rate across Africa today is 5,5%; only three countries have had negative
growth.
Africa is beginning to be a place that you can do business at. Its raw
materials and products are coming to the markets in far more legal ways than
have been the case before.
What I am saying is that this conference, dealing with a particular sector
of the world economy, the biotechnology sector, is a very important one because
it is in a sense preparing for a time which is not far away, in which the
continent of Africa will come into its own in the world economy. We will open
up the vast array of natural and human resources for an industry such as the
biotech industry. South Africa's role in all of this, I believe is to be the
launching pad into this opportunity that is called Africa.
So all of these conferences and particularly this one, I think must
anticipate that eventually our role is going to be a lot more than just
planning for the Western Cape, for our five innovation centres and for the
country. I think our role will be, to be the incubator for what is possible in
the continent as a whole. I want to particularly thank the speakers, those who
will be able to pull together some of the lessons that we have learned here, in
the country, as well as those who will bring some sense of how the world is
moving with regard to biotechnology.
Cape Town, as I have said, contains two of these innovation centres. One
will be hosting the international innovation centre and one that is the product
of the work here. I think that the Western Cape has a large concentration of
biotech research and knowledge creation possibilities. We are well positioned
for the knowledge economy. We have decided about five, six, seven years ago
already that if we do not have the vast mines that Gauteng would have, we do
not have a bourgeoning primary agricultural economy as we used to have in the
past that our future in the Western Cape lies in the knowledge driven
economies. We have identified biotechnology as being particularly important for
us, given that two thirds of our countries, biodiversity resides in the Western
Cape and it is in fact recognised as one of the biotechnology or biodiversity
hotspots in the world.
Our challenge is how do we take this richness, this rich possibility of
biotechnology and turn it into business opportunities. Now there is a natural
risk aversion in the sector. Its returns take longer than anticipated, for
example, other sectors such as information and communication technologies have
a shorter period before becoming profitable. In, biotechnologies there are
quite few procedures to go through. There is a long process of research that
must be done and there is a lot of hand holding that is required.
In this regard, we are very fortunate in South Africa where we have had
mergers and we have about over 20 universities. In the Western Cape, there are
five important universities with important footprints in this province and we
are very fortunate that we have an academic institutional hand holding exercise
and increasingly, I think Government has been able to add to the handholding
exercise that is required in order that we all share the risks and make sure
that this industry reaches its fullest potential because we have no doubt that
when an industry such as this reaches its full potential, its impact is going
to be enormous.
In South Africa, the biotechnology is one of those special industries that
we have to engage in, because it has the potential to push us over the
threshold in terms of the knowledge-based economy. It has a high potential as a
growth sector, it is a leading edge sector with high tech growth possibilities
and I think that is what biotechnology allows us to do.
Secondly, it creates spin offs and it requires a range of support services
and research.
Thirdly, it contributes to solutions to challenges such as human health,
particularly in the South African and African context with us facing challenges
of HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases.
Fourthly, in a country, on the continent that is impoverished, food security
becomes absolutely critical and again, the possibilities that the biotechnology
industry allows us, assist us with what we need to face as challenges.
Fifthly, we have to do it in ways which are environmentally sustainable. So
those are the expectations I think that we have of you. Those I think are the
reasons that between the academic institutions as well as Government, we
collectively understand the need to guide this industry, to hold hands, to
invest in it and to give it time and nurture it, so that its possibilities can
become more apparent.
I have been amazed by just looking at the projections about what will happen
with the countries like China for example. It is projected that by 2039, China
will be the leading economy in the world. It would have overtaken United States
as the largest economy in the world, followed by countries like India, Russia
and Brazil. But China's example is important because if you look at it, China
has invested heavily in the concept of science parks, attached to Government
institutions and attached to Universities. This investment in science sparks
means that, China today has 53 National science parks and 108 regional parks,
with 38 000 businesses emanating from those science sparks, employing in that
country, 4,5 million people.
Now that begins to explain what investments have done, supporting the
projections that they will become the largest economy in the world. I am not
saying that we can necessarily at this stage compete with China, but that is
possibly where our ideals for what can happen on the continent of Africa and
what we need to work towards should be focused on.
I am sure that the networking opportunity that comes from here means that we
cannot be ultra competitive amongst ourselves as specialists in the
biotechnology field. We need to be able to share knowledge, we need to create
areas of speciality, we need to make sure that there is enough variety and not
too much duplication in what we are doing and where there is duplication we
need to find ways to cooperate. I think that is the lesson that we have found
out in South Africa and I think that is the lesson that certainly we have to
find out in the world.
We must also understand that our South African conditions are going to be
completely different to those in the United States. I just visited the Chicago
Medical District which has showed me that we are not there yet. We have to work
within our own limitations. We do not have the ability like a Chicago Medical
District to buy up real estate in Chicago and expand continuously into one
district with its own police force, its own water supplier, its own electricity
security and other related developments.
We do not have the ability to create labs that we give to companies to
incubate them and for them to spend a year, two or three years, simply
experimenting and hopefully, with all the assistance and the encouragement,
they suddenly become business that can now go into another part of the Medical
District and establish their own buildings.
I think we have to be realistic to be able to operate within the conditions
that exist within South Africa and the Western Cape. So somewhere between what
China is doing and what a country like the United States of America is doing,
if we look at Chicago Medical District, we have to say, we have ourselves, we
have a Government that does not have too much resources but is willing to
invest in it, we have universities, we have some of the best medical centres
anywhere in the world, we have some of the best academics that the world has to
offer.
So how do we put all of those together within our limitations and make the
biotechnology industry a burgeoning one. How do we do it, based very much
within South Africa but having aspirations of the whole of the continent, using
at this stage still largely, the South African biodiversity, the South African
academic experience but aspiring to being able to utilise the entire African
continent in order for us to become leaders in biotechnology anywhere in the
world?
I am sure that as our continent becomes absolutely peaceful and absolutely
democratic, we are going to find a rush towards Africa to engage in its own
biodiversity. I think to be absolutely committed to this, we must consider if
the rest of the world were to colonise Africa in a biotechnology sense. Let us
not allow ourselves to be caught up in our own problems and lose out on the
opportunity to understand what would happen if we do not seize the opportunity
for our own development.
So if anything in welcoming you, I would like to leave you with that
challenge because I think that a conference such as this has to look at what is
current but it has to plan for what is on the radar screen in the near
future.
Thank you very much and welcome to Cape Town.
Issued by: Western Cape Provincial Government
17 September 2007
Source: Western Cape Provincial Government (http://www.capegateway.gov.za)
