Five 'Grand Challenges' to End Poverty

from All Africa

Business Day (Johannesburg)

By Tamar Kahn
Cape Town

The science and technology department is circulating a draft plan that maps out its vision over the next 10 years for reducing poverty and boosting the country's competitiveness.

The plan includes ambitious targets to increase the production of senior scientists sixfold, to become one of the top three emerging economies in the global pharmaceutical market, and to achieve a 25% share of the world market for hydrogen and fuel cell catalysts.

"We need a plan for two reasons -- to set out the landscape we'd like to have in 10 years' time and to (secure) funding from the treasury," said the department's director-general, Phil Mjwara.

The plan builds on SA's national research and development strategy and describes five "grand challenges":

To build a "bioeconomy" that exploits the country's diverse indigenous flora and fauna to make SA a world leader in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.

To win a bigger share of the global satellite industry, and to develop space science technology such as earth observation.

To improve energy security by developing innovative clean coal technology, nuclear power, and renewable energy sources.

To become a world leader in climate change science and to contribute to a greater global understanding of human and social dynamics.

SA's universities should also aim to increase the annual production of science doctorates from the current 561 to 3000 by 2018, the plan said.

"If they don't dream big they will never get investment... but I'm doubtful they will achieve as rapid an increase as they want in the production of (senior scientists)," said Prof Renfrew Christie, dean of research at the University of the Western Cape.

"We won't get the doctorates unless we loosen the rules at home affairs and hire in more brains," he said.

Christie said he supported the notion of a 10-year plan, but suggested the current draft placed too much emphasis on commercialising research.

More funding needed to go to research and education at universities, he said. The plan would need to go hand in hand with industrial incentives to boost the local pharmaceutical industry.

The recent Genesis Analytics report, commissioned by the Presidency, highlighted a host of structural problems hampering the local industry.

Mjwara defended the plan, saying it was a work in progress: "We've had criticism from a number of quarters and we are taking the recommendations very seriously ."

The department expected to finalise the plan, and determine what it would cost to implement, by March.

Mjwara also said the department was lobbying the treasury to increase its budget by R2bn over the next three years to implement a new government management information system, improve corporate governance, invest in infrastructure for research and development, and fund a new Technology Innovation Institute that would help commercialise research.

The current science budget is R10,87bn over the medium term.