Michael Kahn

Stellenbosch University | SUN · Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology

‘Science’ has for long been advocated as a key driver of Africa’s post-independence modernisation. This project featured strongly in the Organization of African Unit Lagos Plan of Action of 1980 that called for governments to mobilise 1% of GDP towards building their scientific and technological capabilities. The 1% goal was duly re-affirmed at the...

Fundamentally, STEM capability can only be built in the context of a capable state that is committed to social justice. The two attributes march together. Much of the diagnosis laid out in this Think Piece points to the persistence of shortfalls that characterised STEM education at the dawn of democracy, as laid out in the Policy Framework for Edu...

The mobility of the highly skilled, summarized as brain drain, brain circulation and brain gain, remains a contentious issue for policy. Even so, the evidence base to inform policy remains poor. This gap is of particular importance to policymakers in countries that experience brain drain. This paper reports on the findings of a tracer study of inte...

South Africa's innovation and industrial policy require a rethink. In practice, the innovation policies of the Department of Science and Technology translate into policy for science, while the Department of Trade and Industry industrial policy manifests as a piecemeal assemblage. Re-appraisal of the competences across national, provincial and local...

The book “Vital Signs: Health Security in South Africa” was published by The Brenthurst Foundation (Pty) Limited, St. Andrew’s House, 6 St Andrew’s Road, Parktown, Johannesburg, South Africa. It is written by experts with first-hand knowledge and experience offers narrative descriptions and analyses of the assessment metrics provided by the World...

The anchor concept of this article is the implicit or explicit social contract for science, and its interaction with research and innovation policy in a given system of innovation. This is a topic that has received considerable interest over recent years as innovation, often conflated with the term ‘science’ has become a buzzword in both the North...

Presents the status of STEM education in South Africa, including schooling, technical vocational education and training, and higher education. The contribution includes data and critique of the continued racialized, politicized, and under-performing education system.

This article reports on a novel approach to tracing the career paths of recent doctoral graduates from South African universities. Little was previously known regarding the mobility of students from sub-Saharan Africa who obtain their doctoral degrees in South Africa’s universities, despite this group comprising over a third of South Africa’s total...

The anchor concept of this article is the implicit or explicit social contract for science, and its interaction with research and innovation policy in a given system of innovation. This is a topic that has received considerable interest over recent years as innovation, often conflated with the term 'science' has become a buzzword in both the North...

The Policy Brief provides early results of a tracer study into the career paths of African postgrads who obtained their PhD in a South African university The early findings speak to 'brain circulation' rather than 'brain drain.'

The anchor concept of this paper is the implicit or explicit social contract for science, and its interaction with research and innovation policy in a given system of innovation. This is a topic that has received considered interest over recent years as innovation, often conflated with the term 'science' has become a buzzword in both the North and...

In diesem Kapitel wird das Zusammenspiel von Politik und Innovationspolitik beispielhaft am Fall Südafrikas untersucht. Diese Untersuchung lehnt sich an die Theorie des technologischen Wandels von Freeman-Perez (1988) an, die sich mit der Art und Weise befasst, wie Technologie und Gesellschaft miteinander interagieren. Nach dieser Theorie bezieht s...

With the struggle against apartheid achieved, South Africa faced the new struggle of overcoming the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This paper examines the response of government, the innovation system and civil society in rising to the challenge. The response included a fatal denialism concerning the etiology of AIDS, a fatalism that constitutes political mark...

With the struggle against apartheid achieved, South Africa faced the new struggle of overcoming the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This paper examines the response of government, the innovation system and civil society in rising to the challenge. The response included a fatal denialism concerning the etiology of AIDS, a fatalism that constitutes political mark...

The topic of this article is the mobility of the highly skilled, or ‘moths’, towards, in and from post-apartheid South Africa. The article picks up where the Human Sciences Research Council study on the mobility of knowledge workers left off by examining new data, and innovation and immigration policy. It argues that there has been a considerable s...

[IN RUSSIAN] The establishment of the BRICS New Development Bank signals the maturing of the financial relationships among thepartners of the “club.” This has acquired a heightened profile through the Cape Town Declaration, whereby the BRICSministers of science and technology committed to cooperation on science, technology and innovation (STI). Thi...

A Declaração dos BRICS na Cidade do Cabo em 10 de fevereiro de 2014 comprometeu os cinco signatários para um programa de cooperação em ciência, tecnologia e inovação (CTI). Foi tomada a decisão específica de alocar responsabilidades setoriais para cada parte: mudança climática e atenuação de catástrofes (Brasil); recursos hídricos e tratamento de p...

A new ‘scramble for Africa’ is presently underway. Unlike that of the late 19th century, this second scramble does not rely upon the capture of assets through extra-territorial force. This time around the capture is not overtly violent, being advanced in the person of multinational corporations, both private and state-owned. The new scramble is int...

The BRICS Cape Town Declaration of 10 February 2014 committed the five signatories to a programme of cooperation in science, technology and innovation (STI). A specific decision was made to allocate sectoral responsibilities to each party: climate change and disaster mitigation (Brazil); water resources and pollution treatment (Russia); geospatial...

Some 1,857 highly cited reviews, namely those cited at least 1,000 times since publication to 2011, were identified using the data hosted on the Science Citation Index Expanded (TM) ae database (Thomson Reuters, New York, NY) between 1899 and 2011. The data are disaggregated by publication date, citation counts, journals, Web of Science (R) (Thomso...

A signifi cant part of the growth potential of the world economy for the coming decades resides in some large emerging economies. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) have such potential. 1 More than that, BRICS are thought of as having the capacity to 'change the world' by the threats and opportunities they represent from the econ...

In general, studies based on a narrow perspective of National Innovation Systems (NSIs) focus on the processes of interactive learning and knowledge generation within enterprises, higher education institutions, and government research institutions, as well as on the interactions amongst them that contribute to the innovation process. The issues rai...

The onset of constitutional democracy in South Africa potentially marked a critical juncture in the evolution of its innovation system. At this point the Ministry responsible for science and technology adopted the innovation systems approach. This adoption followed the IDRC OECD-style review of 1993. Nineteen years later, after a full-fledged OECD...

In the last decade South African innovators have produced two game changing innovations: Thawte and Mxit, the former for Internet security and the latter for mobile messaging. It is of interest to understand what it is in the local system of innovation that has enabled such innovations to emerge. Mxit is one of the first instant messaging systems t...

This is the 2011 assessment of the South African research and innovation systems in terms of the wider governance and policy environment.

South Africa has evolved as an attractive target for the enterprises from China, Brazil, and Russia all having considerable expertise in mining exploration, extraction, and processing. South Africa Incorporated spread over the Limpopo, and then across the world, supported by a home base of expertise in project management, logistics, scientific and...

The twentieth century saw substantive shifts in the structure, funding and conduct of public agricultural research and development (R&D) and related regulatory and extension activities in South Africa. Following a long period of steady (and at times quite rapid) growth beginning in the early twentieth century, real spending on public agricultural R...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to construct a possible future scenario for South Africa in Africa using the backcast approach. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology followed is to present a brief political and economic history of African colonization and de-colonization, globalisation and the rise of Brazil, Russia, India, China and...

The paper examines the change in volume of South African publications as indexed to the Web of Science over the periods 1990-1994 and 2004-2008. It was noted that publication volumes have increased sharply even while the stock of researchers has remained static. A number of factors may account for the rise including the increase in the Department o...

The 20th Century saw substantive shifts in the structure of agriculture and agricultural production in South Africa. Farm size grew, farm numbers eventually declined, and production increasingly emphasized higher-valued commodities, notably a range of horticultural crops. The real gross value of agricultural output grew steadily (by 3.32 percent pe...

This article explores major evolution stages of innovation policy in South Africa which is now in transition to constitutional democracy. The author seeks to identify prerequisites for the new innovation system in the country and to understand the role of the government and the Ministry of Science and Technology in driving the system. The paper als...

The South African government is seeking to shift the economy from being efficiency driven toward being more knowledge-intensive. Noting that the economy is dominated by services we examine research and development (R&D) and innovation in the sector using data from the national R&D and innovation surveys, and interviews with 18 local transnational f...

The African Union (AU) Commission and the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) have set out a "Consolidated Science and Technology Plan of Action (AMCOST, 2005)" to promote socio-economic transformation. Monitoring and evaluation of that Plan is central to its success. To that end this paper deals with the problem of generating applicab...

Various surveys of Knowledge Management Practices (KMPs) in private firms show how an increasing awareness of Knowledge Management (KM) is a critical determinant of an organisation's competitiveness. While private sector strategies favouring internal knowledge sharing and external knowledge protection often provide strategic advantage, public secto...

Multinational pharmaceutical companies ( 'pharmas') import and produce pharmaceuticals and also conduct clinical trials which are an important aspect of research and development (R&D). This may raise the question: Is South Africa a guinea pig for the pharmas? The Department of Trade and Industry National Industrial Policy Framework(1) designates ch...

The South African Department of Science and Technology Ten Year Plan seeks to move the system of innovation toward growing a knowledge economy. It sets ambitious targets for scientific production (PhD graduates; world share of scientific publications) whose attainment in part rests on the effectiveness of the universities. The paper commences with...

INTERNATIONALIZATION OF TRADE HAS extended to services and intangibles such as research and experimental development (R&D). The emergence of knowledge economies with porous borders raises questions concerning the preparedness of countries to manage their systems of innovation in response to these changes. This article draws on the recently complete...

The paper examines how the South African national system of innovation (NSI) has evolved through the transition from apartheid to democracy. To provide structure to this analysis Kim's 1998 concept of the ‘constructed crisis’ in firms is applied at the level of the state. This schema is found to be useful given the complex forces shaping the young...

MICHAEL KAHN is Executive Director of the Knowledge Management Group of the Human Sciences Research Council. He has worked internationally as academic, independent consultant, and adviser to government and higher education. His fields of interest span science and technology and information policy, science education, and the promotion of public comm...

The article examines changes in the South African national system of innovation (NSI) since the onset of democracy in 1994. In particular, the recently completed 2001/02 Survey of Research and Experimental Development (R&D) is used to quantify the shifts in R&D activity for the major business, government and higher education players. The major flow...

WE PROVIDE AN OVERVIEW OF THE history of research and development (R&D) surveys in South Africa and give some results from the 2001/02 R&D survey. Certain trends are analysed, mainly in relation to the methodologically comparable 1991/92 R&D survey; the results of previous surveys are also referred to. Various issues related to R&D and capacity dev...

The consequences of the separate and unequal education policies of the apartheid years in South Africa persist into the present, and without specific redress measures will persist into the future. The disparities are most serious in the higher education gateway subjects Mathematics and Physical Science. In order to track education redress it is nec...

The phrase 'knowledge economy' has acquired currency as powerful as the adjective 'modern' once had. This paper explores the meaning of knowledge-based economy from the perspective of the South and traces the rise of the information sciences and the interplay between information technology and the present globalisation. Particular consideration is...

This paper marks the fifth anniversary of the unbanning of various liberation movements in South Africa. A new form of power-sharing is embodied in the Government of National Unity. The paper examines the history, vision, planning and implementation of the SYSTEM programme: Students and Youth into Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. T...

This paper considers the outcomes of a sector study on science and mathematics education (Kahn, 1993) carried out in order to develop funding policy for a major donor. The first part of the paper sets the background to donor involvement in mitigating the effects of the apartheid education system. Next the difficulties in carrying out the sector stu...

One of the issues facing the new democratic government in South Africa is that of curriculum reconstruction in science education and training. The years of apartheid rule have seen these areas locked in outmoded, decontextualized forms, which have become dysfunctional for the whole community. The result is a human resource development profile which...

This paper examines different models of science education and their relevance for the South African context. The authors draw on their extensive experience in other independent Southern African countries to examine case studies on the post‐independence development of science education in Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. The present proble...

Incl. abstract, bibliographical references, appendices

The paper describes an empirical research project to measure the attitudes and changes of attitude among junior secondary/senior secondary students in Botswana, to the introduction of pre-vocational education through the inclusion of agriculture as a core corriculum subject. The data were obtained by comparing attitudes of two cohorts at the end of...

The paper reports on a survey carried out in Botswana on the attitudes toward pre‐service education of serving teachers and tutors/education officers. The study commences by considering similar work previously carried out in the United Kingdom. Comparison in the Botswana case is also made of the differing views within two subsamples, namely those b...

Variance as a function of time is described for the Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate's examination standards, with emphasis on the performance of candidates from Botswana and Zimbabwe. Results demonstrate the value of simple linear modeling in extracting performance trends for a range of subjects over time across six countries. (TJH)

In common with many other African countries, newly independent Botswana attempted to redress problems in its education sector through the reforming agency of a national education commission. Slightly more than a decade has passed since the National Commission on Education of 1976 carried out its work, and now is an appropriate time to consider its...

The teaching of physics through the medium of integrating technology is considered. This article reports on the teaching strategy employed and the choice of suitable examples of technology. Possible extensions of the strategy to other science fields are also discussed. (Author/CW)

Outline of the Paper: 1. The South African System of Innovation 2. Current practices in R&D measurement as well as the measurement priorities within the sectors 3. The South African experience of the institutionalization of R&D surveys and S&T statistics and how the institutionalization affects the collection and the quality of data. 4. Methodologi...

All industrialized and even industrializing economies now exhibit a dominance of services in the composition of their GDP. The services sectors are dynamic and innovative, and frequently show growth rates in excess of the manufacturing sector. Services include 'knowledge intensive service activities' or 'KISAs.' However KISAs, especially R&D presen...

Presented at GLOBELICS 2009, 7th International Conference, 6-8 October, Dakar, Senegal. Parallel session 1: Firm innovation strategies