Are South Africas science policy choices hindering its drive to commercialise research and speed development?
Sonja van Renssen reports. Emile van Zyl, a professor of microbiology at South Africa’s University of Stellenbosch, once heard an analogy that he thinks says a lot about science policy in his country. “Japan will come up with an idea and then decide who’s going to do it,” he says. “Then they ask the team what they will need. Finally, they decide where they are going to do it, and they build the building. In South Africa, we build the building and then ask what are we going to do with it?” This tendency to let enthusiasm override rational, long-term planning has increasingly affected science policy since apartheid ended in 1994 and South Africa launched ambitious plans to use science to drive economic growth. Guided by international experts, South Africa became the first developing country to adopt a ‘national innovation system’, focusing on building interactions between government, industry and universities rather than developing each sector independently (see ‘The ‘system of innovatio
