Minister Pandor's speech at the Southern African Association for Research into Maths, Science and Technology Education gala dinner, National Museum of Natural History, Pretoria
Prof Mercy Kazima, SAARMSTE President,
Prof Andile Mji, Assistant Dean,
Prof Stanley Mukhola,
Deputy Vice Chancellor,
Teaching & Learning – TUT.
As you know, the study of mathematics and science is crucial to our children's future career prospects. They need maths and science in school to go on to study engineering, medicine, and other professions at university. And those who do not go on to university also need maths and science to succeed in jobs requiring advanced scientific and technical skills.
There is, of course, no direct connection between good school scores in maths and science and the number of engineers and doctors who graduate each year. However, good school maths and science is an essential to platform on which to build.
Most of the young people who matriculated successfully recently will change jobs ten or twelve times over their lives, they will have five or six employers, and retire in or around the year 2070. No one of us here tonight knows what the employment environment will look like then, but one thing is certain. It will be very different to now.
Just think, there has been more technological change in the last ten years than there has been in the last one hundred.
One hundred years ago it was possible to teach a child the basic skills that that child could use for the rest of his or her life. That is no longer possible. We are educating our children for a future that will be vastly different to now.
How can we anticipate the sorts of skills that young people will need? We know already that they will have to continuously upgrade their skills and even learn new skills through lifelong learning. We know that the internet has created a new platform for global communication and that it has also facilitated a new way of doing business globally.
We know that any business process that can be automated, digitised or outsourced, will be automated, digitised, or outsourced (Tom Friedman, The World is Flat, 2005). We can see it happening as we speak, as companies look for new ways of producing products and making services available throughout the world.
How do we teach our children the skills that will not be outsourced to foreigners in another country where that work can be done cheaper, or automated or digitised?
Our children have to learn how to use knowledge so that they can avoid being made redundant. But when they are made redundant, when jobs are lost to new technologies, when new business processes automate their jobs, then they have to be able to learn new skills – to upskill, to reskill, and so to earn a living for themselves.
We cannot know what the work environment will look like in 2070, but we do know that those who master maths, science and technological skills will be best placed to learn new skills.
We cannot fear the future. We cannot resist the future. We have to embrace the future. But we have to embrace the future on our terms, on African terms.
We need African scientists to devise new solutions to sustainable development -to provide cleaner energy and better food and better health to our communities. We need African scientists to develop new technologies that allow us to use our natural resources in a manner that reduces environmental risk. We need African scientists to save our resources for future generations.
Government is working hard to ensure that more young people study science and mathematics. I'm pleased to see that the Dinaledi schools conditional grant was replaced in the 2015 budget by a more comprehensive programme of support to schools to improve teaching and learning outcomes in maths, science and technology.
We play an important niche role in the DST. The Scifest, our DST-supported science centres, and our national science week, all serve the objective of expanding science access and awareness.
All of these initiatives affirm that the success of our endeavours depends on the development of a science, engineering and technology human-capital pipeline that starts at school. These multi-stakeholder driven science, engineering and technology awareness campaigns, which include science festivals, are the best way to create excitement among pupils.
To take an education-technology example, the DST began collaborating with the Department of Basic Education and the Eastern Cape Department of Education in 2012, looking at how a range of technologies could be deployed to address education-related challenges in a rural context. It was called the TECH4RED project.
It contributes to the improvement of rural education through ICT-led innovation in nutrition, agri-teaching, water, sanitation and e-health. It's comprehensive, holistic, and aimed at serving the best interests of the school child.
It began with a ICT team from the CSIR's Meraka, which ran a comprehensive scoping exercise of 26 schools in the Nciba district of the Cofimvaba School District in the Eastern Cape to see what ICT technologies were suitable. The CSIR's Meraka Institute uses new and existing technologies to improve maths and science teaching, initiatives like Dr Math, a mobile Maths tutoring programme.
Corporates offered tablets. The HSRC undertook important monitoring and evaluation work. Then the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform joined forces and set about testing different sanitation options, with the help of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The listing of participants doesn't capture the real innovation of the Cofimvaba project. The real innovation is in different levels of government and business and non-profits all working together.
At the international level, we worked hard to ensure that the vital contribution of science, technology and innovation was recognised in the United Nations’ formulation of the new Sustainable Development Goals.
We contributed strategically to defending our and Africa’s interests in international climate change negotiations that concluded successfully at the CoP-21 meeting in Paris at the end of last year. Climate change is a prime example of a policy domain dependent on sound scientific advice for decision-making and the expertise of our climate and other scientists was an invaluable resource for our negotiators.
The SDGs will only succeed, if they can succeed in Africa. If they don't succeed in Africa, they won't succeed at all. Of all regions in the world, Africa's rapidly growing population most needs sustainable development. Take energy. The demand for energy is set to surge, fuelled by economic growth, demographic change and urbanisation. As the costs of low-carbon energy fall, Africa could leapfrog into a new era of power generation. But don't always think of high tech. Think frugal tech as well. Think social innovation.
One interesting example of this, in the growing field of technology imitating nature, springs to mind - the air conditioning system in Harare's Eastgate Centre. It has no air-conditioning system, you know, those boxes that hang out of windows or high up on walls, and blow ice air down your neck - and probably built under licence from a foreign patent holder. Instead, it imitates nature.
High chimneys draw in cool air at night and funnel it through the building during the day, cooling down concrete slabs and cooling rooms. The inspiration was a termite mound. It's how termites keep cool in the hottest of summers. It imitates nature, and save's electricity.
The field of biomimicry is growing every day. You don't have to be a rocket scientist. But you do have to be a scientist of nature.
Similarly new technologies could transform African agriculture. If we invest in Africa’s green and blue technologies, Africa will be transformed. These new technologies can generate a much-needed improvement in Africa’s food and nutrition security. Growth in agriculture is twice as effective at reducing poverty compared to growth in other sectors. That’s what a recent McKinsey report tells us. It’s more effective at reducing poverty than investing in mining or finance or services. And it’s women who produce most of the food.
In closing, let me emphasise this point: collaboration across Africa is vital - not only across southern Africa although that's the best place to start. Universities have a key role to play. There has been some progress in this regard, as illustrated most recently by the formation in March 2015 of the African Research Universities Alliance in Senegal.
This is a network of 15 leading higher education institutions from eight African countries. Its goal is to train research managers as well as promoting cooperation between universities when it comes to research.
South African universities and public research institutes have been working together on African development issues for many years. There are a number of consortiums pursuing important work around science and maths training, climate change, water and bio-energy. Universities have long concluded bilateral and multilateral agreements. More recently, we have seen the rise of multiple-partner networks.
These are often organised around a jointly administered educational programme. Increased collaboration will not only raise the share of African scientific output, but help create “The Africa We Want” outlined by the AU in its Agenda 2063.
There are also private initiatives. The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), founded in Muizenberg by Neil Turok, an astro physicist and son of struggle veterans, has helped to prepare Africa's top maths and science graduates for careers in research, industry and government. AIMS began in 2003 and after four years we recognised it as a national asset, and we gave it a line item in the education budget.
By 2008 it began to expand into Africa through its Next Einstein initiative. The plan was to open 15 AIMS centres across Africa within a decade. A pan-African network of 15 centres now turns out 750 highly skilled alumni a year, feeding academia, industry and government. Other governments now fund AIMS - Canada, Senegal, Ghana. A full scholarship at AIMS costs just US$10,000 a year, one-fifth of the cost of educating a graduate student in Europe or North America.
Countries have the responsibility to develop and retain their own talent, and we have developed innovative partnership programmes. We have just started country-bilateral research chairs - the first with Switzerland - that are ideally suited to researchers splitting their time between countries.
We also encourage students from around the world to come to South Africa to study and we are stepping up efforts to attract postgraduate students and postdoctoral scientists to come to South Africa. International students, postgraduates, researchers - especially from our neighbouring countries - bring tremendous benefits to South Africa and they make an enormous contribution to the intellectual vibrancy and diversity of our educational institutions.
