Department of Science and Innovation Reports

The purpose of this Ten-Year Innovation Plan is to help drive South Africa’s transformationtowards a knowledge-based economy, in which the production and dissemination ofknowledge leads to economic benefits and enriches all fields of human endeavour.The plan builds on previous work undertaken by the Department of Science andTechnology (DST). It is not, however, a compendium of existing programmes. Instead,it is a high-level presentation of the principal challenges identified by the DST, startingnot from where South Africa is today, but where we should be a decade from now.The core projections for 2018 are summarised as South Africa’s “grand challenges”in science and technology.

In recent years Local Economic Development (LED) has received growing attentioninternationally, largely for its assumed potential to address localised economic and social challenges and promote local development. It has been increasingly recognised that LED represents a strategy with potential to address local development backlogs, particularly in the Global South, where traditional ‘top-down’ approaches have generally failed to catalyse significant local change. One dimension of LED is the local government variant which is styled as ‘developmental local government’ and has been actively promoted in South Africa for almost 20 years in an effort both to achieve post-apartheid socio-economic redress and toenergise economic development.Twenty-one years after South Africa’s transition to a democratic state many of the country’s development and unemployment challenges remain unresolved despite the pursuit of a range of development interventions, including LED. There is clear evidence that social and spatial inequalities remain deeply entrenched and that efforts to promote the growth of the national economy have seen little benefit accumulating to especially the more marginalised regions of the country. Within this context spatial interventions, including LED, are gaining greater prominence as key elements of the development terrain. The National Development Plan andthe National Growth Path, are the two guiding national development programmes and both clearly articulate the need for spatial targeting, while a range of other interventions are being introduced or are receiving reinvigorated support. These include, inter alia, rural development initiatives, special economic zones, targeted support for inner-cities and poorer neighbourhoods, infrastructural development and assistance to small businesses, cooperatives and the informal sector.

The mandate given to the Ministerial Review Committee has been a challenging one for a number of reasons, not least because of the complexity of the object of study. In asserting the inclusive definition of the National System of Innovation (NSI) (rather than a restricted definition), the Committee set itself the task of appraising, and making recommendations on, a very extensive landscape of human endeavour, marked by widely differing territories and strongly divergent fields of practice.The Committee was conscious of the prior efforts of numerous reviews and evaluations that recommended significant NSI organisational and structural changes, only to see things remain as they were. Some of our advice may therefore carry echoes of previous recommendations, but now with measures that are intended to achieve the policy effects that we seek for the system.We believe that this report provides fresh reflection on the issues and brings into discussion a range of considerations not assembled in this way before. We are aware of important dimensions that deserve further attention, however, either because their salience has been illustrated in the report or because the limitations of time and resources have not permitted their inclusion. 

The national system of innovation (NSI) is the set of bodies or institutions that contribute to the stimulation of development and diffusion of new technologies. The NSI, encompassing science, technology, and innovation (STI), is meant to have a positive impact on society and to create an enabling system that generates pride and supports a free and open society unafraid to tackle the inevitable challenges that confront it. For such a system to be relevant it has to be able to respond rapidly to a changing global context and to meet the needs of the country, the region and the continent; its goals and objectives should therefore be aligned with nationalpriorities as defined in a number of policy and strategic documents, Vision 2030 of the National Development Plan (NDP) in particular. 

Powerpoint Presentation: ICT RDI Implementation Roadmap remains a crucialcornerstone and key guiding framework for DST’s ICT RDIactivities. The National Development Plan provides this vision for ICT:“by 2030, ICT underpins a dynamic, inclusive and prosperous information society and knowledge economy, in which a seamless information infrastructure will meet the needs of citizens, business and the public sector, providing access to a wide range of services required for effective economic and social participation at a cost and quality at least equal to South Africa’s competitors.”

The national system of innovation (NSI) is the set of bodies or institutions that contribute to the stimulation of development and diffusion of new technologies. The NSI, encompassing science, technology, and innovation (STI), is meant to have a positive impact on society and to create an enabling system that generates pride and supports a free and open society unafraid to tackle the inevitable challenges that confront it. For such a system to be relevant it has to be able to respond rapidly to a changing global context and to meet the needs of the country, the region and the continent; its goals and objectives should therefore be aligned with nationalpriorities as defined in a number of policy and strategic documents, Vision 2030 of the National Development Plan (NDP) in particular. 

A policy Brief: National economic development policies play an important role in promoting economic growth. However, such policies have failed to evenly distribute economic activities across space. Further, they have become increasingly inadequate to tackle development challenges of specific territories as national institutions are often too remote to respond to the rapid changes and needs of localities and regions. By contrast, local institutions can be more flexible as they are better positioned to interact with local actors and take advantage of local resources. That is, local economic development (LED) emerged as a viable way to overcome local development problems with the administrative unit chosen as the main scale for the delivery of LED. Historically, the practice of national government resembles a decadal response toLED planning. The legislative and policy context for elevating LED to an obligatorymandate for all South African local authorities was recognized by the 1996 Constitution of the Republic of South Africa and subsequently consolidated in the 1998 White Paper on Local Government which established the notion of‘developmental local government’ (Rogerson, 2008). The release of the nationalframework for LED in 2006 by Department of Provincial and Local Governmentprovided definitive guidelines to local authorities for LED and was viewed as a majorstep in LED planning. The introduction of ILED in 2016 contributes to the formulation of new directions for LED planning. 

APolicy Brief: How can science, technology and innovation (STI) be harnessed forinclusive rural development in South Africa? Given the increasing amountof attention, resources and planning being devoted to rural development inSouth Africa, but with seemingly little desired impact, this question is vital. Theinnovation policy framework pays scant attention to rural innovation systems,which tend to be heavily localised and informal and are increasingly extendingbeyond the agricultural subsector (Hart et al. 2012). Innovations in othersocial and economic sectors to uplift vulnerable communities in rural areas aregaining momentum and deserve close attention in research and policy.

This Statistical Report presents data tables from the 2013/14 South African National Survey of Research and Experimental Development (R&D survey) with commentary, standard summary tables of the overall findings from 2013/14 along with time series from nine previous instances of the survey. The Statistical Report is publishedtogether with the Main Analysis Report which provides selected analysis of the survey data.The survey covers the sectors that perform R&D in South Africa, namely the business, not-for-profit, government, science councils and higher education sectors. This approach is followed in order to satisfy national data needs and, at the same time, maintain consistency with the institutional sector categorisation recommended by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in The Measurement of Scientific and Technological Activities: Proposed Standard Practice for Surveys on Research and Experimental Development, known as the Frascati Manual (OECD, 2002).