Keynote address by the Deputy Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation during the Municipal Innovation Recognition Awards 2025 held in Durban on Monday, 30 June in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal
UKZN Vice Chancellor and Principal, Professor Nana Poku
COGTA Deputy Minister, Dr Namane Dickson Masemola
SALGA President, Cllr Bheki Stofile
eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality Mayor, Cllr Cyril Xaba
Director-General for the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr Mlungisi Cele
The leadership and representatives of various Municipalities
The technical team from UKZN, DSTI, MIMI and SALGA
Ladies and gentlemen.
It is with great excitement that we gather here this afternoon for an event to pause and put a magnifying glass to the important sphere of our government – the municipalities. More exciting for us, as the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI), is to see this important initiative, which falls squarely within our mandate, taking off the ground. And I have no doubt that, in the years to come, the Municipal Innovation Recognition Awards (MIRA) will continue to grow stronger and attract even more corporate sponsors.
We have chosen to focus on promoting and rewarding innovative efforts in our municipalities as part of new ways to improve service delivery, build the local economy, and advance a new culture of embracing innovative smart instruments for smart working, thereby repurposing our municipalities to be smart. It was that genius of all time, Albert Einstein, who once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
We have seen the reports from the Auditor-General about the municipalities’ performances, which do not paint a good picture. Many will ask why the MIRA still sees anything good in some of these municipalities to deserve these awards. The answer is that our focus as key stakeholders to MIRA and MIMI is the municipalities' pivot towards embracing innovation and technology. We are awarding these efforts from the municipalities today and seeking to inspire those who have not yet embraced innovation and technology in their systems.
We know that as more municipalities adopt smart city instruments, they will become more effective, resulting in fewer adverse reports and disclaimers in the long run. This is what SALGA will want to see. In many ways, the work we are doing in driving local government towards innovation and these awards must be seen as a key complementary work to SALGA’s efforts in improving the local government sphere in this country.
Ladies and gentlemen, it was Peter Drucker, an Austrian American Management Consultant and author, who once said: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. In this context, Drucker emphasised the need to transform the organisational culture to suit changes, such as a shift towards an innovative culture. Resisting changes from old ways to new ones will hinder the leapfrogging towards advanced technologies in our municipal businesses. Evidence abounds that municipalities that adopt innovation and new technologies improve the quality of service. Innovation leads to the effective delivery of basic services, such as water, sanitation, electricity, and waste management.
Innovative technologies disrupt the status quo and replace outdated legacy systems of service delivery, which are often a source of public complaints. In this context, municipalities that adopt technological solutions reduce costs in delivering services because technology tends to streamline processes, without human error.
To illustrate the above point, think about the efficiencies and cost reduction brought about by a municipality that has innovated a pay-as-you-go water supply system to its ratepayers, as opposed to a supply-and-pay system, which many households often blame collection offices for inaccurate account estimations. This demand and supply mechanism, operating within a predetermined cost structure, empowers the consumer to manage resource supply, similar to a prepaid electricity system, as opposed to a meter system. These automated measures reduce shift-blaming and empower a ratepayer to be in control based on their budget.
Once again, think about municipalities that have digitised their interactions with ratepayers, ranging from account payments, property valuations updates, and rates payments, and the use of artificial intelligence to instantly respond to ratepayers’ queries, thus building trust and improving information flow.
And so, the issue of municipalities adopting more innovation in their work processes and systems is not only a task for larger municipalities, such as the metros and those with strong urban-based municipalities. The imperative of embedding technology in our local sphere is even more urgent for rural-based municipalities to address the persistent development problems in our rural communities.
There is a prevailing sense of relaxation and doing the bare minimum in rural municipalities from the perspective of adopting new ways of work, including adopting innovative tools. And the excuse has never been a lack of revenue, nor the dependence on grants. From our perspective, as the Department of Science, Technology, and Innovation, the problem is not a revenue shortage, but rather a lack of creativity among senior officials at the municipal level.
Our call as the DSTI is for municipalities to open themselves to partnerships with government agencies that can work with them to address technological gaps. The department I have the privilege of leading leads the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the best in Africa, which develops a wide range of innovative prototypes that meet clients' needs. The government and private sector collaborate with the CSIR to develop various world-class innovative solutions.
We also have the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA), which focuses on technological developments and their onboarding to institutions and businesses. These agencies work with different departments at all levels and other municipalities that approach them. No municipality can have an excuse for lacking assistance, given that world-class government agencies are in place.
In this regard, as the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation, in line with our Decadal Plan on science, technology and innovation and our new mantra “Placing science, technology and innovation at the Centre of government, education, industry and society” we pledge to support all the efforts to transition our municipalities, big and small, to be innovative driven and technologically embedded. SALGA needs to work more effectively with our department in this regard.
I take this opportunity to congratulate all the municipalities that are winners and recipients of this year’s awards. This should inspire those who are still behind to embark on this journey in their municipalities. In the future, we will want to have all municipalities qualify in terms of criteria, which is based on their adoption of an innovative culture and infusion of technologies into their business processes. I believe this will happen in the near future.
Thank you.
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