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Address by Minister Mosibudi Mangena, at the NRF President’s Awards Ceremony
2006-06-02 13:35
Kiwietskroon, Pretoria
Minister
False
Address by the Honourable Minister Of Science & Technology, Mr Mosibudi Mangena, At The NRF President’s Awards Ceremony 2 June 2006 Venue: Kiwietskroon, Pretoria Deputy Minister of Science and Technology, Honourable Derek Hanekom Chancellors and Vice Chancellors, Members of the NRF Board, President of the NRF, Dr Khotso Mokhele, Representatives of Science Councils, Members of the Academic Community Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, In 1903, Albert Michelson, the famous scientist and winner of the 1907 Nobel Prize said, “the most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplemented in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.” It is just as well he was wrong. Indeed his own careful and elegant experiments on light, and the determination of its constant velocity underpinned the great leap that Einstein was to make two years later. I wanted to emphasise this because the winners of the NRF President’s Awards literally demonstrate science in action. By taking action and committing substantial resources to scientific and technological development, the effect on our human resources is already evident. Our winners are champions in their fields, ranging from the natural sciences to social sciences. A special note of congratulation to our Lifetime Achiever: Dr Bob Brain, whom we wish every success in his pursuit of excellence. To all the winners we say: “You epitomise the reality that science, technology and innovation are as rewarding to individuals as they do to the nations that have heavily invested in them. We truly appreciate and applaud your contributions to the National System of Innovation. The Deputy President recently described the shortage of skills – notably professional skills in engineering and science – as “the single greatest impediment” to both public infrastructure and the private investment programmes. The Northern Cape has selected the Square-Kilometre Array (SKA) bid and the construction of the Karoo Array Telescope (KAT) as one of its development priorities. City bound academics may find this strange. Earlier this week, as part of our programme of engagement with our partners, I visited the planned site of the KAT near Canarvon. Standing outside in the cold Karoo air, I imagined the four thousand 15m high-precision dishes that would be built in South Africa and placed in the Northern Cape if we win this global competition. I thought how this might change the future of our largest but least populated province. I thought about a 20 year programme to develop world-class astronomers, physicists, software engineers, and the associated jobs in high value academic tourism, and hundreds of conferences and symposia. I saw the opportunity for patents, partnerships between academia and industry, the establishment of new industry platforms and the associated economic benefits for our country. This is not an idle dream; the European Nuclear Research Center (CERN) has forever changed a corner of France and Switzerland where it is located. It also gave us the World Wide Web. In general, we tend to underestimate investments made in talented people and the positive effect of technological missions that are visionary, challenging and linked to our unique setting. The NRF is a key institution in our national focus on science and technology. Its role in the short, medium and long term is of particular significance. Science and technology are critical tools in our attempts to address our socio-economic challenges and position our country to meet the development demands of the modern economy. This is especially important if we want to address the socio-economic inequalities faced by those living in underdeveloped areas. We cannot expect adequate and sustainable provision of water, sanitation, quality housing and transport if regional and local councils have no engineering and technical capacity to make this possible. Similarly, if our schools do not have sufficiently qualified maths and science teachers to assist learners to prepare for their Senior Certificate examinations, many of our young people will not qualify for the opportunities to study natural sciences and engineering. Given the rate at which countries across the world are deriving benefits from the global knowledge economy, we must pay particular attention to developing a powerful scientific and technological sector whose foundation is our human resources. We need a cadre of high quality, creative, and productive scientists and innovators who can keep abreast of scientific and technological changes, set the pace in certain instances, and compete favourably on the world stage. Unfortunately, South Africa is plagued by an endemic shortage of skills in the science, engineering and technology sector. It is common knowledge that although Africans comprise nearly 80% of our population, they comprise only 2% of our A-rated scientists and 5% of the registered engineers, technologists and technicians. And the rate at which young people are entering the science sector still falls far short of meeting our development targets. From 1992 to 2001 the percentage of African graduate in the natural sciences improved from about 23 to 54, and in the health sciences, from 38 to 57. However, in the critical areas of post graduate studies, the percentage of African graduates in Masters and Doctoral Degrees is still far below 50%. Therefore, the mandate of the NRF, which is to develop this important cadre of our human resources can never be sufficiently underlined. This anomaly does not only compromise the rate at which we can change the face of research in the country; it also impacts negatively on our ability to meet our minimum developmental targets. PhDs, for their own sake, are of little value. We need to find better mechanisms to link PhD production to the economic and social challenges we face. Traditional universities have not been very good at this, and nationally, we still do not have a consensus on how relevance and excellence articulate and forge a new and sustainable approach to our human resource challenges. The number of young men and women who are actually choosing to study and work in long term scientific research careers has not improved much. The demographics for senior academics and established researchers have remained almost unchanged since 1994. In order to ensure that our scientific and technological innovations aggressively address the development challenges of the poor, we need to build a critical mass of relevant scientists and researchers within our research councils and academic institutions. The cornerstone of our human resource development plans must therefore be the youth. Our young men and women are the custodians of our future economic and social well-being, and must be given the appropriate knowledge and skills to confidently respond to the challenges facing our communities, our country, our continent and the world. And for these reasons my department is investing a lot of resources to ensure that South Africa’s youth are at the core of all our plans to transform our science sector. Together with our partners in the public and private sector, we are striving to create an enabling environment for effective teaching and learning in maths, science and technology inside and outside of the classroom. The National Plan for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Olympiads, Competitions and Camps, and the National Plan for Educator Support have recently been finalised. And the involvement of the South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement (SAASTA) has been of critical importance in this regard. Government acting alone cannot bring about significant change. The involvement of all role players is critical in ensuring that we build and maintain a confident, competent and sustainable scientific human capital. To galvanise our people around science and technology, we need new missions of national significance. And to inspire a new generation of researchers, we need new frontier programmes and strong institutional capacities to ensure careful and effective use of resources. Through the Research Chairs, the Centres of Excellence, and the Prestigious Post-Doctoral Fellowship Programmes, the NRF is playing a seminal role. These programmes are strategic investments intended to strengthen and intensify our response to national imperatives. They complement the current granting programme with modern and responsive instruments that have proven their worth in innovation systems similar to ours. Through its national facilities and specialised partnerships, the NRF is involved in developing a 10 year plan for astronomy, the operations of the Innovation Fund and the THRIP programme of the dti. It developed the strategy for our Antarctic research programme and was pivotal in the development of the National Research and Technology Infrastructure Strategy. The NRF will continue to play a key role in the development of research infrastructure. As I indicated in the budget speech recently, our ageing national equipment infrastructure is rapidly becoming obsolete, and our ability to timeously and routinely replace out-of-date equipment has been a cause for considerable concern. We cannot hope to work at the cutting edge without constantly sharpening our tools. Our attempts to obtain a more substantial budget for replacing the ageing equipment infrastructure have generated a commitment of R211 million for higher education institutions and science councils over the Medium Term Expenditure Framework. This should be invested strategically, paying particular attention to relevance, excellence and partnership. Albert Michelson may have been wrong about science and its future development. But he was not just an experimentalist in a laboratory; he invented the echelon spectroscope, developed a rangefinder for the US Navy, and made the first accurate measurement of the dimensions of a star. Interestingly, he never did a PhD. This was not a requirement for a science career in his rather different age. His accomplishments ultimately came from his obsessions and his passion for his work. And this is true for all the awardees we are celebrating tonight. We heartily congratulate the winners of these awards. May each of you be spurred on to higher levels of innovation and excellence. We celebrate your achievements and the inspiration you provide to us all. May I, in closing, take this opportunity to bid farewell to the outgoing President and Chief Executive Officer of the NRF, the exceptionally capable Dr Khotso Mokhele. With him at the helm, the NRF has grown from strength to strength as a trusted partner in the development of the national system of Innovation. As a result of his contribution at the NRF, this Fulbright Scholar has received numerous prestigious awards locally and internationally, including five honorary doctoral degrees in science and business management from higher education institutions in South Africa and abroad. Khotso has a comprehensive understanding of the international science and technology arena. This has seen him serve on a number of committees, including the South African Steering Committee for the proposed Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope, an international project worth about $1 billion. As champion and later as a board member of the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), Mokhele led the campaign to obtain international funding for this project. He is passionate about the development of people, uncompromising in his high standards, a visionary with his feet on the ground. We are indeed privileged to have worked with a person of Khotso’s calibre. We wish him all the best in his future endeavours. I thank you. |
The MeerKAT - SKA Schools competition
