South Africa has signed a five-year agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), outlining the country’s priority needs in terms of nuclear energy use.

This follows the expiry of a similar agreement signed between the two for the period 1999-2004.

This makes South Africa the only African country to finalise its second Country Programme Framework (CPF) Agreement, as an official member state of the IAEA since 1957.

Director-General in the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Dr Phil Mjwara, officially signed the CPF agreement between South Africa and the IAEA at the DST offices on the CSIR Campus in Pretoria today.

The agreement outlines South Africa’s current and future priority needs in the areas of nuclear technical cooperation and development.

Responsibility for the management of the SA government’s relations and obligations with the IAEA has been delegated to the Departments of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and Minerals and Energy (DME). The DFA manages the international agreement and all related matters with the Agency, on behalf of the other two departments.

For its part, the DST is responsible for the management of the Technical Co-operation Programme (TCP) which helps to transfer nuclear and related technologies for peaceful uses to countries throughout the world. The Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (Necsa) has been mandated by the DST as the implementing agency for the TCP.

The IAEA’s main objective is to establish a system of supervision and control to make certain that none of the assistance programmes that it fosters and none of the materials whose distribution it supervises are used for military purposes.

It is under the TCP that member countries are expected to develop a CPF Agreement every five years regarding national priorities for support.

According to the DST, the development of this agreement involves lengthy consultation with all national nuclear stakeholders within a country on sector priorities before an agreement could be signed between a member country and the IAEA.

It is also used as a reference for preparing programme requests by a member state, appraisal for such requests and resource’s allocation by the IAEA.

Identification of these select areas provides opportunities for establishing high quality projects, referred to as “Model Projects” in the Agency’s terminology.

The DST added that the proposed 2005-2010 programme was consistent with the South African government’s priorities and policies in particular areas.

This includes the White Papers on Agriculture, Transformation of the Health System, Energy Policy, National Water Policy, Integrated Pollution Control and Waste Management, Science and Technology and the Programme on Transformation of Higher Education.

The collective priorities extracted from this policy and strategy environment were mapped against the main sectors of the nuclear Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) arena in order to define opportunities to the country’s benefit.

In addition, it has been contexualised in terms of priority issues of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) President Thabo Mbeki outlined in his 2004 State of the Nation Address.

South Africa also became a State Party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) during 1991, and shortly thereafter concluded a Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA. The Agreement demonstrated South Africa's wish to comply with its international obligations to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In addition to periodic on-site technical inspections conducted by the Agency's safeguards inspectors, verification is carried out to ensure that nuclear materials and installations are applied for peaceful purposes and use.

-Ends

Issued by the department of Science and Technology.

For media enquiries contact:

Kristin Klose, Director: Communication, Department of Science and Technology @ 012 843 6785/082 902 9503 e-mail:  kristin.klose@dst.gov.za

For more information about CPF agreement, contact:

Ms Isabel Bezuidenhoudt, Technology Diffusion Programme @ 012 843 6403/ 082 881 7986 e-mail: isabel.bezuidenhoudt@dst.gov.za