Keynote address by the Minister of Science, Technology, and Innovation Prof Blade Nzimande at the 2025 NRF Awards, at the NH Hotel, Sandton
Programme Director, Ms. Lerato Mbele;
Honourable Ms. Tsakani Shiviti, Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Science, Technology, and Innovation;
Honourable Ms. Nomalungelo Gina, Deputy Minister of Science, Technology, and Innovation;
Dr. Mlungisi Cele, Director-General of the Department of Science, Technology, and Innovation;
Mr. Nqaba Nqandela, my Special Advisor; Our Science Expert, Dr. Derrick Swartz;
Prof. Mosa Moshabela, Chairperson of the NRF Board; Dr. Fulufhelo Nelwamondo, CEO of the NRF;
DDGs of the DSTI and other Senior government officials; Heads of the DSTI’s Entities;
Heads of other government Science Entities;
Officials from the Ministries of Science, Research, Higher Education and Environment, from various African countries and Europe;
Other International guests;
Heads of Science Institutions from various African countries;
Representatives of Institutions responsible for the Promotion of Science; Representatives of National Quality Assurance bodies;
Leaders of Business and Industry; Funders and Foundations; Adjudication Panel Members; Award Recipients;
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am honoured to deliver this keynote address at this prestigious occasion- the 2025 National Research Foundation Awards.
I wish to start by indicating that earlier today, I learned with great sadness of the passing of my colleague, Dr. Ibrahim Murtala Muhammed, Ghana’s Minister for Environment, Science and Technology, who died in a plane crash yesterday in Ghana.
We were together at UNESO earlier this year. He was with eight other senior Ghanian government officials, including the Minister of Defence, Dr. Edward Boamah, all who unfortunately passed on.
On behalf of our government, I wish to convey our heartfelt condolences to the affected families and the government of Ghana. At this moment, I wish to request that we rise and observe a moment of silence.
The importance of the NRF awards
Tonight is about celebrating and acknowledging the hard work, persistence, and commitment to excellence by some of our country’s top established and emerging researchers.
I must commend you for your choice of theme for this year’s awards, which is “Innovating for a Sustainable Future.” Your chosen theme is profoundly thought-provoking and from it, we can make a number of important deductions.
The first is that you have rightfully elevated innovation and placed it at the centre of all efforts to build a responsive public science system and most importantly, a sustainable future.
This is consistent with our Department’s newly adopted mantra, which is “Placing Science, Technology and Innovation at the centre of Government, Education, Industry and Society.”
The second is that the only way a country can reasonably expect to enjoy a sustainable future is by making a meaningful investment in the development of its scientific capabilities.
A critical enabler in this respect is the adoption by government and public sector organisations of a culture where planning and decision making is informed by science.
The third is that countries that consciously harness their scientific capabilities to resolve such development challenges as poverty and inequality, gender and other forms of violence, access to quality education and health care- are more likely to enjoy a sustainable future.
The fourth implication of your theme is that there can never be a sustainable future for humanity in a world that continues to be characterised by one of the biggest paradoxes of our time- the precarious coexistence of vulgar levels of inequality with obscene amounts of wealth- often concentrated in the hands of a few within society.
Even more fundamental is the realisation that there can never a sustainable future in a world wherein some of the most powerful countries use science to enable the human destruction and death.
The impact of global shifts
The second issue I wish to reflect on is the capacity of our public science system to respond to national and global shifts. Over the last three decades, South Africa’s public science system has grown phenomenally- earning us the status of the biggest public science system on the continent.
Our capacity to sustain this growth and strengthen the role of our public science system as a critical enabler for meaningful socio-economic development, depends on a number of variables- one is the ability of our s ystem to adapt and respond to changing circumstances.
Further more, as a country we occupy the G20 presidency for this year and as a Department we lead the Research and Innovation Working Group (RIWG). We are using this Group to advance our science priorities, including the need to undertake focused research on our continent’s genetic diversity.
We live in an epoch that is defined by a complex combination of old and emerging challenges. These challenges include economic stagnation, rising social inequality, the persistence of armed conflict, the negative impact of climate change, technological disruption and new tensions arising from a growing push towards unipolarity by some countries, through bullying.
As a country, we have already felt the consequences of these seismic geopolitical shifts. Not so long ago, the government of the United States of America decided to withdraw funding for key scientific projects between the US and South African research and academic institutions.
As Minister, I had to respond to this and as some of you may be aware, I established a Working Group to advise me on the impact of these funding cuts. I am pleased to state that the Working Group has completed its work within the allocated deadline.
I am currently processing the Report of the Working Group, and through our Director- General, we are preparing to present its findings to Cabinet and thereafter, to Parliament.
One of the main reasons for my decision was to protect the sovereignty of our public science system. As a country and continent, we must learn from this tragedy and quite frankly, the embarrassment we experienced during the global outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
At the height of this pandemic, the lives of millions of Africans were at the mercy of the generosity of foreign pharmaceutical companies, and this was because as the African continent, we didn’t have the requisite pandemic preparedness capacity.
To avoid a repeat of this precarious dependency, I believe that, as a country and continent, we must actively build what I refer to as a sovereign research and development agenda for Africa.
I am proud to state that we have made significant progress in this respect by developing among others, our Vaccine Innovation and Management Strategy, which in short is referred to as (VIMS).
Science for social justice
The third issue I wish to focus on is the importance of using science to advance social justice. In addition to having killed over 60 000 Palestinians since October 7, 2023, Israel has also committed what is known as espistemicide or scholasticide in Gaza.
Israel has decimated the educational system of Gaza, which includes the killing of over 400 academics, over 50 of them professors and the destruction of about 12 universities.
Informed by our own experience of colonialism and apartheid and country’s foreign policy, last year, I formally announced a new programme to enable cooperation in science, technology and innovation between South Africa and Palestine.
The programme will also have a special focus on safeguarding, rebuilding, and developing Palestine’s research and innovation capacities and infrastructure.
The programme is being implemented by the NRF and will entail a number of elements. The NRF published a call for expressions of interest for South African organisations, including universities and civil society not for profit organisations, to submit proposals for collaborative actions with Palestine.
The imperative of transformation
The fourth and final issue I wish to reflect is the imperative of transformation. I have made this point before, and I believe it is worth repeating until such that we see a fundamental change in the gender, racial, disability and other demographics of our public science system.
Even though we have made commendable progress in growing our public science system, in the last three decades- it still concerns me deeply that our public science system continues to exhibit some of the structural features of our apartheid past.
One of the most obvious is the continued under representation of blacks and women at the highest levels and of course, as government, we are supposed to lead in changing all this. This is why, I convened our country’s first ever Summit on the Transformation of our National System of Innovation.
The outcomes of this Summit have been incorporated into the Annual Plan of our Department, and as Minister, I have publicly committed to providing Parliament with regular progress updates on their implementation.
Additionally, we need to build on the gains already made, such as women now constituting more than 50% of the academic and research workforce in our country.
The pipeline of the next generation of researchers also looks much healthier as the NRF has funded more women (55%) consistently over the last 10 years.
I have raised the issue of transformation with the leadership of the NRF, and they have assured me they will support the Department’s efforts to transform our public science system.
As Minister, I also wish to acknowledge that the NRF has made commendable progress in the area of transformation and we both agree we need to still do more.
In conclusion
Our public science system has not only produced excellent researchers, but South Africa has also become a ‘sought-after’ global platform for conducting astronomy, nuclear physics, palaeontology, medicine, and social sciences research of international stature.
All this has been made possible by the high calibre and impactful work that has been done over years, by one of our country’s premier public research institutions, the NRF.
I also think it is highly commendable and visionary on your part as the NRF that you have awards that focus on Next Generation Researchers and Early Career/Emerging Researchers. This is critical for our human resource develop needs.
I also wish to congratulate and commend the NRF Board, the NRF Executive and staff for working hard over the years to lay the basis and justification for today’s celebration.
Finally, on behalf of government, I wish to congratulate all the winners of the 2025 NRF Awards and in particular, the recipient of the lifetime achievement award. I wish to thank each of you for your sterling contributions to the country’s knowledge base.
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