SOUTH AFRICAN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION INDICATORS 2017

The adoption of the South African Innovation Scorecard Framework by the National Advisory Council on Innovation (NACI) in 2016/17 provides a framework for the analysis of the state of science, technology and innovation (STI) in South Africa. This framework (Figure 1.1) categorises STI activities into three components: the public sector’s enabling activities, firm-level innovation activities, and the economic and social outputs of innovation. 

The enablers incorporated into this report include STI human capital, knowledge generation, and STI funding and support. One of the key policy questions concerns the slow pace of absorption of black graduate researchers into the private sector. This report shows that there is a low supply of doctoral qualifications for females in disciplines such as engineering, mathematics and statistics, and computer and information sciences. Only 18% of doctoral degrees in engineering were awarded to female graduates in 2015. In terms of race, there is a limited supply of black doctoral graduates in disciplines such as life sciences and engineering. The recommendation for strengthening research capacity at historically disadvantaged institutions (HDIs) partly addresses this high-end skills supply challenge.