The Department’s 2011-2016 Strategic Plan identified human capital development, global and Africa collaboration, knowledge generation (research and development), knowledge exploitation (innovation), and infrastructure development as priority focus areas. The Department’s 2015-2020 Strategic Plan continues these five focus areas but with new emphases on innovation and capacity building in Africa.
The five priorities are now the following: boosting our human capital development for science, technology and innovation, with a special focus on transformation; promoting government-business- university investment in R&D; translating more effectively the outcomes of our investments in research into the development of new products and services for the South African economy; ensuring consistent progress of the SKA project with construction starting on schedule in 2018; and, contributing decisively to science, technology and innovation capacity-building elsewhere in Africa.