Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to reply. I would like to respond to a statement made by hon Dambuza, including her complementary remarks to the two learners from Matatiele for winning the awards at the science fair supported by the National Research Foundation. This is one of the agencies that the department uses as a tool to support both our science system, and also the supply pipe of human capital from the school level all the way through to higher education and the research sphere.
There are a number of similar initiatives that the Department of Science and Technology has embarked upon to encourage young people especially to take a keen interest in pursuing careers in science and those that require maths and science. This is in order to support our science system, as well as to seize the many opportunities that are going to emerge as a result of the major scientific projects that we have embarked upon. An example is as the Square Kilometre Array, SKA, which is going to result in a lot of new opportunities, such as in engineering and ICT. It is estimated, for example, that the data that is going to be generated as a result of the SKA will require the capacity equivalent to hundredfold the total of the Internet as we know it today. You can imagine the kind of job opportunities that are going to arise as a result of that project's coming to fruition.
Therefore, we are going to need a lot of young people who have studied maths and science to take up the opportunities that are going to arise. I thank you for bringing this to the attention of the South African people. [Applause.]