Programme director; Lele Mehlomakulu
Jock McKenzie; Chairman, Accelerate Cape Town
Chris Whelan; CEO, Accelerate Cape Town
Members of the media;
Ladies and gentlemen

In his 2013 State of the Nation Address, President Jacob Zuma said “The National Development Plan (NDP) provides a perfect vehicle for united action precisely because it has the support of South Africans across the political and cultural spectrum. Leaders in every avenue should be ready to rise above sectional interests and with great maturity, pull together to take this country forward.”

The NDP calls us to look beyond the constraints of the present to the developmental imperatives of the next twenty years. This comprehensive plan recognises science, technology and innovation as central to our efforts to achieve higher economic growth rates and ultimately improve the lives of our citizens.

As the Department of Science and Technology, believe that, in order to sustain the successes achieved thus far, and advance the objectives of the NDP, we must constantly strive to create an atmosphere that is conducive for meaningful partnerships. Our own experience has taught us that the approach of forging public-private partnerships enhances our capacity to provide practical solutions to some of the most pressing social challenges facing our country and continent.

This was the context of the Science, Technology and Innovation Summit I convened a month ago, attended by board chairs and heads of science councils, heads of parastatals and leaders of industry. The summit provided a valuable forum for robust discussions and reflection on the opportunities and challenges in achieving a focussed, aligned and more effective system of research, development and innovation.

The same constituencies represented at the Summit are present today share the Summit, share the aspirations and would agree that we will need to harness our collective capabilities to move towards knowledge based economy.

A precondition of doing so is to attract more youth towards studies and careers in the challenging but vital areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. One positive aspect of the National Curriculum is that every child must study Mathematics or Mathematical Literacy. This is a positive step forward from the situation where almost half our matriculants did no form of Mathematics in matric. These are the subjects that are needed for further studies in the sciences and technology.

A key component of a viable National System of Innovation is the availability of skilled and creative scientists, technologists and innovators. My Department has been active in addressing this challenge and some of our programs could provide opportunities for Accelerate Cape Town in your endeavour to transform the City into Africa’s Global City as per your vision statement.

Allow me to give you a summarised overview of the work of the DST.

Human Capital Development is at the heart of the work we do; and a number of interventions have been introduced over the last few years to address these key requirements for a successful National System of Innovation. I would like to share with you, just two of our successful instruments.

The first is the nine Centres of Excellence programme. These Centres concentrate existing capacity and resources to enable researchers to collaborate across disciplines and institutions on long-term projects that are locally relevant and internationally competitive. We also provide support to important organisations such as the National Institute for Theoretical Physics and the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (both based in this Province). These Centres have nurtured an impressive number of young scientists, significantly increased publications in peer-reviewed journals, and leveraged funds from external sources. Five of the Centres of Excellence are housed in the Western Cape.

The department published a call in April for five new centres of excellence, which are to be established before the end of April 2014, making a total of 14 CoEs.

The second human capital programme is the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI). This focuses on the established research community to support increased research and innovation outputs as well as strengthening the human capital development pipeline for the next generation of researchers and emerging researchers. The SARChI project began with 21 chairs in 2006 and has grown to 152 chairs in diverse disciplines across the natural sciences, engineering, humanities and social sciences. The Western Cape is home to 42 Chairs, a further 19 will be active by the end of this year.

Last month’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Summit emphasised the role of government in promoting a culture of innovation in South Africa. In other words, government needs to be more responsive to business and pro-actively assist in the more efficient and targeted use of available resources.

Technological innovation holds tremendous potential for growth in South Africa. In its efforts to connect knowledge generation to economic development, the Department has introduced a number of ambitious interventions. These have concentrated on the exploitation of new knowledge for economic development around the mining and resource sector and the bio-economy sector. I would like to briefly highlight a few examples.

Beneficiation: Sector-specific initiatives in mining and mineral resources: The South African Minerals to Metals Research Initiative is a joint venture between industry and the DST; emerging academics and researchers at South African universities (with industry mentoring to researchers and postgraduate students);and with a focus on identified projects of real interest to industry members.

Fluorochemical Expansion Initiative: South Africa has one of the largest confirmed fluorspar reserves in the world and is the third largest exporter. However, South Africa is only beneficiating 5% of its annual production. So while we supply over 10% of global fluorspar requirements, we earn less than 0,5% of the world's $16 billion per annum revenue.

The Fluorochemical Expansion Initiative is driven by the DST and the Department of Trade and Industry, and is aimed at developing South Africa's fluorochemical industry through increased local beneficiation of the country's fluorspar reserves.

Beneficiation: Titanium: South Africa also has significant titanium ion reserves. We are planning to establish a centre of competence as a platform to integrate upstream research and development and downstream supply chain development in order to exploit the market opportunities in the industry. The focus at the moment is on new, proprietary South African technologies for primary titanium metal powder production at a substantially lower cost than the current supply of powder.

Beneficiation: Platinum: South Africa has the largest platinum group metal (PGM) reserves, which constitute almost 75% of the world known reserves of PGMs. Platinum is the most effective catalyst for the conversion of hydrogen into electricity in fuel cells. The department established three Centres of Competence at leading Universities and Science Councils to drive the research and development efforts in the field of hydrogen and fuel cells. The Centres have made significant progress and have successfully attracted the interest from private sector partners who are mostly interested in commercialising the Centres research and development outcomes.

Post-Harvest Innovation: Our initiative with the deciduous fruit industry stands out as a classical case of industry, government, academia and science councils collaborating to enhance the competiveness of our fruit exports.

The Post-Harvest Innovation Program has funded 54 research projects in the fresh fruit sector to address post-harvest issues such as product control during transit, packaging, non-invasive fruit quality assessment, and post-harvest disease control.

The main mandate of the department is to promote and support Research and Development. The latest national survey on research and development (R&D) shows that South Africa’s spending has slipped. What has really dropped is private sector spending. The uptake of instruments like the tax rebate has been fairly low, although the measures were introduced to make it more user friendly. We have set ourselves the goal of reaching the elusive 1% target by 2016 and aim for 1,5% by 2022.

In 2006, the Research and Development tax incentives were introduced to encourage the private sector to invest in R&D. The initial uptake of this incentive was less than we had hoped, so, taking into account criticisms of the instrument itself, the incentive was modified by the Taxation Laws Amendment Act in October 2012. This led to applications from 188 new companies between October 2012 and June 2013. This was in addition to the 623 existing companies that have continued to use the incentive. The significant increase in applications caught the department by surprise and additional resources have had to be secured to deal with the increase and the backlog that has resulted. We are confident that by the end of the year, we will be on track to revert to the 90 day response cycle.

While innovation is as much about networks and partnerships as it is about creative thinking, we know that government can’t do all of this on its own.

The Greek philosopher, Aristophanes, said: “Let each man exercise the art he knows.” I believe this is the basis of innovation: each person excelling in the way in which he or she is personally equipped to do.

But, to achieve an innovative society, we need to harness each person's innovation. We won’t know if we’ve succeeded in transforming South Africa unless we can see and measure the change and, where necessary, adjust it.

There is a need to strengthen the link between innovation and value capture in the very complex interactions and collaboration between diverse public and private actors in innovation systems. To achieve that, government has to provide the necessary support and play a co-ordinating role.

Effective innovation systems depend on a smooth flow of knowledge and technology between enterprises, universities, and research institutions. The mechanisms that enable this smooth flow of knowledge include joint industry research, public private partnerships, technology diffusion, and movement of personnel.

The dilemma from the perspective of setting public policy and co-ordinating so many different, independent resources is that government must set the example by being both innovative and inspirational in its approach. And it must do this while being predictable and consistent.

Although many of the projects of the DST prove that innovation is not the exclusive domain of the private or research sector, there is a limiting factor to government innovation. That limiting factor is that governments has to operate on the basis of structure and rules. There is no other way to govern.

Innovation, by contrast, is the antithesis of structure and rules.

Charles Kettering, the American engineer and inventor who was head of research at General Motors, pointed out that: “All human development, no matter what form it takes, must be outside of the rules, otherwise we would never have anything new.” Unless, of course, the golden rule is “Thou shall innovate!

South Africa’s peaceful move to democracy nearly twenty years ago exemplifies this basic tenet of innovation.

For innovation to flourish, it is necessary to provide the freedom for new thinking and new action to actually happen. By definition, policy making circumscribes freedom. The challenge is to ensure that policies create the enabling conditions for innovation to happen.

As an innovation broker or intermediary, I believe there is much that can be achieved for Cape Town and for the country in a closer interaction between Accelerate Cape Town and the DST.

I congratulate you on your Vision 2030 and am gratified by your commitment to transforming South Africa through your beloved city. I am particularly delighted to see that yours is an organisation focused on action. We at the DST also believe that, for the country to become what we all envisage, ideas must be concretised.

As Albert Einstein said: “Discussion and argument are essential parts of science; the greatest talent is the ability to strip a theory until the simple basic idea emerges with clarity.” I would simply ask that we get to the basic idea, the innovation we all seek, sooner rather than later.

Thank you.