Chairperson, hon Minister and Deputy Minister of Science and Technology, hon Ministers and Deputy Ministers present, hon Members of Parliament and of my committee in particular, guests of Parliament, the director-general and his team, sons of the soil, flowers of the nation and people of integrity ... [Applause.] ... on 18 April 2012, the director- general of the Department of Science and Technology, Dr Phil Mjwara, briefed the Portfolio Committee on Science and Technology in the NA on the strategic plan and budget of his department. This was followed by a number of such briefings by entities of the department.
The briefing by the director-general mainly focused on strategic plans and principal goals, such as building a national system of innovation that has key priorities and recent outputs as its focus; current strategic challenges; monitoring and evaluation; gross expenditure on research and development; and the financial resources of the department.
The department's annual performance plans, as derived from its strategic plan, are mainly guided by the White Paper on Science and Technology; the 10-year Innovation Plan; and the National Research and Development Strategy, as approved by the Cabinet in 2002. The 10-year Innovation Plan of the department is at the heart of its Vision 2018 programme, in terms of which the SA economy is expected to be transformed into a knowledge-based economy.
As articulated in the Medium-Term Strategic Framework and the New Growth Path, the department has sought to directly address three of the 12 national priority outcomes, namely Outcome 2, which focuses on a long and healthy life for South Africans; Outcome 4, which focuses on decent employment through inclusive economic growth; and Outcome 5, which focuses on a skilled and capable workforce to support an inclusive growth path.
All of the above-mentioned national government priority outcomes have a direct bearing on the department's Vision 2018 programme. In the case of Outcome 4, for instance, the department is aiming at improving the country's global competitiveness rating. Currently, we are ranked 50 out of 142 countries. Second, the department is aiming to develop a strategy to increase the country's gross expenditure on research and development as a percentage of gross domestic product from plus-minus - I don't know for sure because it has been fluctuating - 0,8% to 1,5% by 2014.
The Minister has already presented the budget allocation of R4,9 billion and the way in which it has been distributed to the various programmes of the department. What is important for us to note is that in this allocation the department is clearly steering most of its activities towards creating an environment that is conducive to a knowledge-based economic future for our country.
Why a knowledge economy specifically? Well, let us remind ourselves that traditionally wealth is created by three factors, namely labour, land and capital. Even from the earliest period of economic industrialisation, technological innovation was deemed crucial to success. Although success was not built primarily on recourse to traditionally accepted forms of knowledge, it was built on learning from experimentation and reflection on practice.
In a nutshell, the economic role of knowledge was written about prominently long before the evolution of a knowledge economy achieved its prominence from the World Bank in September 1996. That was when the newly appointed president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, was looking for a big idea for his speech at the annual meeting of the World Bank at the International Monetary Fund that September. He needed a big idea to mark the radical shift in all the the bank's operations, which was part of his new reforms to the World Bank, and would mark his legacy. He decided to declare the World Bank "the knowledge bank". This led to the subsequent establishment of a high-level working group, chaired by the vice-president, Jean-Francois Rischard. The working group produced a report outlining a new knowledge strategy for the World Bank and recommending a series of research studies into the economics of information and knowledge. This was to become a reality soon, in 1998, through the World Bank's highest-profit annual document, titled Knowledge for Development. This document was subsequently filed in the bank as the World Bank 1998(a) Report.
To further mark the importance of knowledge in the economic development of a country, the World Science Forum, starting from 2003, declared that its events would have as their focus the theme "Knowledge and Society". At its 2005 event, it focused on "Knowledge, Ethics and Responsibility"; the 2007 event focused on "Invest in Knowledge to Invest in the Future"; and in 2009 it focused on "Knowledge and the Future".
The 2011 event - which I was fortunate enough to attend because they wanted South Africa to host the 2015 event, after Brazil in 2013 - focused on "The Changing Landscape of Science: Opportunities and Challenges". I think all these ideas are enshrined in the department's strategy for a knowledge economy.
The steering committee of the World Science Forum focused on the latter theme because they wanted presenters at this event to demonstrate how new global challenges created new scientific fields. They also wanted to see how new scientific powers would arise, such as was evident in the emergence of Brazil, Russia, India and China, or the Bric countries, and India, Brazil and South Africa, or the Ibsa countries, etc.
Based on the conceptualisation by the world's powerful institutions of the centrality of knowledge to sustainability, society, the future, ethics, the emergence of new nations as scientific powers and of new scientific fields, etc, there can be no doubt that in ushering the South African nation along this path of economic transformation, the Department of Science and Technology is motivated by a long-term vision and wisdom for our country, namely that it will come to the fore as one of the most powerful nations in the world.
The department believes that knowledge is like light. Weightless and intangible, it can easily travel around the world, enlightening the lives of people everywhere. There is therefore no reason that, in our day and age, billions of people out there should still be living in the darkness of poverty.
Well, after the department's presentation of its strategic plan, the portfolio committee was very pleased to welcome the department's progress towards a future knowledge economy. It also acknowledges the challenges that are faced by the department, especially in terms of funding. In fact, we did advise the department that we now had a tool in Parliament in terms of which we were able to assist should the situation be similar to "a cat lying on the stove". So, the committee here in Parliament can be approached to help institutions like the Technology Innovation Agency, or TIA, take off.
As was already reflected in the analysis of the DST budget, excellent allocations are being done to enhance not only the development processes of our SKA telescope in the Northern Cape region specifically, but also of radio astronomy on the African continent more generally.
In the 20th century, we discovered our place in the universe. Our telescopes revealed an expanding universe, with billions of galaxies filled with stars of all sizes and temperatures, along with black holes, neutron stars, planets and gas clouds. In the 21st century, we seek to understand the complete evolution of our universe and its constituents. The SKA telescope, the product of a new revolution in radio astronomy in the world, will make it possible and affordable to achieve the dream of understanding more about our universe. This project is expected to be built in 2024. South Africa is bidding against Australia to host it, following the identification of the suitability of the skies of the two competing countries by the international community.
The SKA is expected to push the frontiers of space observation beyond anything known since the birth of our universe. Already, one such innovation in technology, known as radio interferometry, has been awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. This is the type of technology that South Africa is planning to employ to connect with eight other countries on the African continent, as far afield as Ghana and Mauritius, once we are selected the bid winners against Australia. This should happen in two weeks' time, by the way. This is also the reason we are being favoured as the potential winner by the European Union, because we bring with us more countries from our economically fertile continent. This will result in so many economic spin-offs, both for the continent and the world. The SKA programme is a collaboration between institutions in 20 countries and will consist of an inner core and outer stations arranged in a long spiral pattern, extending to distances of up to 3 000km.
In Europe, and elsewhere, many so-called "SKA pathfinders" have already been developed, such as the Low Frequency Array in the Netherlands. Of course, in South Africa, we already have the Karoo Array Telescope, or KAT7, in the Northern Cape. On my way to the Netherlands, I read that those dishes have already started to detect neutral hydrogen, which is the birth of life, in one of the distant galaxies.
What will the SKA contribute as transformational science? It will address a number of fundamental questions in astrophysics, in fundamental physics, cosmology, particle physics and astrology. [Applause.] It is expected to address a number of key physics projects such as the first black holes and stars, the cradle of life, cosmology and dark energy.
Scientists believe that 400 million years after the Big Bang, or the birth of our universe, the first radiating objects - for example, stars and mini quasars - were formed. Due to their strong radiation, the surrounding neutral hydrogen gas was not only heated, but also ionised. Six million years later, this pervasive gas was transformed from a fully neutral to a fully ionised state - hence the change from the dark ages to our light planet. This pivotal period in the history of the universe is known as the epoch of re-ionisation. It holds the key to our understanding of structure formation and evolution and represents a missing piece of the puzzle in our knowledge of the universe.
The SKA telescope will be able to probe back in time into the epoch of re- ionisation. It is believed that the 21cm radiation line emitted by neutral hydrogen during the epoch of re-ionisation would be detected by the SKA telescope and then we will understand the essence of life in the stars.
Furthermore, observations with the SKA telescope will contribute to a wide range of astro-biological goals, such as finding out whether there are other earth-like planets orbiting stars other than the sun. Today, scientists know that the gas from which stars are formed contains surprisingly complex organic molecules, implying some form of existence on those stars.
The benefits of the SKA telescope are far-reaching and wide. We will benefit from SKA engineering and SKA computing. Beyond science, there will be benefits such as human capital development, employment, technology development and so on. At this juncture, I think everybody has heard what the SKA is bringing us. I therefore beg for the support of the department's project on the knowledge economy. [Applause.]