Prof Blade Nzimande, South Africa’s (SA) minister of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI), officially opened the 2025 SA Science Forum (SFSA) at the CSIR convention centre on 25 November.
The SFSA has become Africa’s foremost platform for strategic STI dialogue. This year is a special occasion as the Forum celebrates a successful 10 years. It also coincided with the country’s G20 Presidency.
The theme of this year’s SFSA is Placing Science, Technology and Innovation at the centre of Government, Education, Industry and Society. “This is the STI Department’s mantra and national call to ensure all aspects of its national development are driven or inspired by STI and that we must consistently raise the levels of public awareness about the value of science,” Prof Nzimande said.
SFSA 2025 brings together more than 6000 participants, including scientists, policymakers, youth innovators, entrepreneurs and civil society representatives. Delegates participated in 38 side events and 91 high-level panel discussions on science diplomacy, inclusive innovation, disruptive technologies, science journalism, the African Union’s (AU)’s STI Strategy for Africa (STISA 2034).
SFSA 2025 also included many engaging exhibitions. One of the most exciting was the SA Tech Challenge 2025. This initiative aims to identify high-potential SMME’s whose technologies address societal challenges.
Prof Nzimande also addressed the current geopolitical and economic climate. This era has seen the emergence of some of the most radical technological advances in human history – AI, robotics and biotechnology while, social inequality grew across the world.
“Technological and scientific advances must be addressed if we are to create a fairer, more humane and stable world.” – Prof Blade Nzimande
The minister called for ways to facilitate global social inclusion and social justice, making science accessible to even the most marginalised citizens. In his opening speech, he shared his hope that these critical issues would be addresses during the SFSA.
Whilst it might be argued that science and technology are driven by objective principles and methods, its social uses are not neutral. This has been the case since the first and second industrial revolutions. It also holds true for digital revolutions and technologies such as AI, used as genocide instruments in Palestine, Congo and Sudan.
Minister Nzimande highlighted the need for a fundamentally different future for Africa, to be more forceful in extricating the continent from the legacies of neo-colonialism and dependent development. He believes Africa needs a Sovereign Research Agenda (SRA), designed, funded and directed by African priorities and concerns, not by well-meaning external donors.
To enable the development of an SRA, Prof Nzimande said African countries need to:
- Build robust science infrastructure and regional networks, accessible to all scientists and researchers across the continent, enabling African countries to produce young male and female scientists and researchers;
- Create institutional policy mechanisms to reverse the loss of critical skills and intellectual property by addressing working conditions for scientists and researchers;
- Develop capacity to process and benefit from the continent’s mineral wealth and reduce illicit financial outflows. Each year, African states lose substantial amounts of tax revenue to illegal outflows, which could be used to fund education, health care and other critical social services;
- Develop closer networks between STI, economy and industry to enable tech-commercialisation and increase the scale and support for technology-driven SMME’s;
- Develop a clear strategy for use of AI and other emerging technologies to enable implementation of STISA 2034. This issue received dedicated attention during this year’s session;
- Build credible preparedness capacity to address Africa’s disease burden and threat of pandemics. This is critical for the realisation of the AU’s objective of ensuring that by 2040, at least 60% of all vaccines used in Africa are produced within its own borders;
- Improve the quality of maths and science education in public schools; and
- Perhaps most importantly, African countries must significantly increase their GDP expenditure on Research & Development.
Prof Nzimande also highlighted SA’s STI milestones, guided by the country’s National Development Plan 2030, the STI Department’s 2019 White Paper on STI and the Decadal Plan for STI (2022-2030). Over the last three decades, targeted investments were made across a number of critical STI areas. He also said SA made significant progress in placing STI at the forefront of national development, strengthening and promoting scientific internationalism.
With regards to space science and astronomy, SA co-hosts the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), the world’s largest radio astronomy project and the Southern African Large Telescope or (SALT), celebrating its 20th anniversary in November.
Through SKA and SALT, SA has significantly enhanced its international collaboration in astronomical science discovery work and developed cutting-edge infrastructure. This also provided significant socio-economic benefits for the Carnarvon and Sutherland communities, SKA and SALT locations.
In the area of health innovation, a local company, Biovac, received approval from the South African Heath Regulatory Products Authority (SAHPRA) to start clinical trials of its Oral Cholera Vaccine. This breakthrough positions SA as a potentially significant vaccine distributor and full-scale manufacturing hub.
UNESCO designated SA’s African Institute on Indigenous Knowledge Systems (AIIKS) as a category II Centre. This brings together a network of 30 members, including four SA universities, two from Germany, another from Canada and various institutions from across Africa.
The Centre focuses on critical areas such as healthcare and wellness, climate change resilience and environmental sustainability. All these milestones are a direct result of investments government made in STI, the result of the dedication and ingenuity of SA’s scientists and researchers.
SA’s Presidency hosted the high-level G20 Leaders’ meeting, adopting a Summit Declaration.
“We particularly support paragraph 107 of the Declaration, the second convening of the G20 Research and Innovation Working Group, reaffirming the importance of promoting vibrant international partnerships in STI. We reiterate that research and innovation should actively promote participation of women and girls in STEM and reduces global inequalities and asymmetries in the access to and production of knowledge. We undertake to implement G20 Recommendations on Science Engagement to broaden participation in and make science accessible to all in society, bolstering our commitments to Open Science.” – Prof B Nzimande
The hosting of SFSA 2025 is a direct response to implementing the G20 Recommendations on Science Engagement. Dr Nzimande thanked all who supported the STI’s Department’s work over the past 10 months. Another first for the African continent is the global gathering- the World Conference on Science Journalists, to take place within a week after the STSA.
