Critics say plan lacks focus and ‘out of the box’ long-term thinking
South Africa’s National Advisory Council on Innovation has identified nine areas on which the country’s science system should focus in order to bolster economic growth and improve the livelihood of its citizens. But critics say the report lacks focus and that it doesn’t look far enough into the future.
The priority areas were unveiled in Pretoria on 4 December during the first day of the three-day Innovation Bridge-Science Forum South Africa, an annual event which for the first time this year has a joint focus on science and innovation.
At the launch of NACI’s ‘South Africa foresight exercise for science, technology and innovation’ report, Department of Science and Innovation director-general Phil Mjwara said the priorities will help guide policymaking. The DSI, which commissioned the report from NACI, is in the process of drawing up its decadal plan for science and technology that will lay out the areas that government prioritises and funds.
The nine priority areas in the report are: the circular economy; education for the future; sustainable energy; the future of society; health innovation; high-tech industrialisation; ICTs and smart systems; nutrition security; and water security.
Each of the priority areas has a number of “thrusts”, or monitorable outcomes. For example, “education for the future” has three thrusts: skills for the fourth industrial revolution; inclusive innovation and development; and curriculum development 2030.
“Nutrition security”, on the other hand, has four thrusts: zero-impact agriculture; use and acceptance of modern biotechnology; personalised information for health nutrition for all; and precision and big data in agri-businesses.
“We are taking a long-term perspective and linking science and innovation to the needs of Africans,” NACI acting chief executive Mlungisi Cele said at the launch.
NACI put out a public call for priorities and received 70 submissions, which it whittled down to nine through workshops and online voting.
To arrive at its shortlist of priorities, the foresight team—which included NACI members as well as external advisors—used big data analytics to track global and local science trends and to analyse South Africa’s science and innovation performance and current priorities. It also carried out stakeholder interviews.
There were three criteria for inclusion, said Peter Greenwood, director of consultancy Non-Zero-Sum Development, which assisted with the report: potential impact; global and local STI trends; and socioeconomic impact in line with South Africa’s National Development Plan. The NDP is meant to guide the country’s trajectory until 2030.
However, Greenwood says using 2030 as a benchmark for imagining the future resulted in short-term, rather than long-term thinking, which is not the point of a foresight exercise. “The outputs are not as out of the box as we’d hoped. Instead of focusing on 2050, we were focusing close by,” he said. “The people we were working with focused on the current reality because it was only 12 years away.”
Others have questioned the report’s lack of focus and criticality. A policy expert who spoke on condition of anonymity said the report shows “a lack of real engagement with the socioeconomic issues of the day” and that it “reads like a wishlist that could have come out of Brussels or Buenos Aires”.