Reimagining STI Policy through Engaged Policy Experimentation | 24 NOVEMBER 12:15–14:15

What’s valuable about doing STI policy differently through Engaged Policy Experimentation—and what does it take to make it happen?

Join practitioners, policymakers, and researchers on 24 November 2025 for a dynamic dialogue on how Engaged Policy Experimentation (EPE) can support the co-creation of science, technology, and innovation (STI) policy that strengthens inclusive, participatory governance. The session draws on real-world policy experiments from the Transformative Innovation Policy–South Africa (TIP-SA) community and invites delegates to reflect on how an EPE approach could add value to their own work, including in initiation, design, implementation, and evaluation.

Please register here to attend this event.

SFSA Youth Roundtable | 26 NOVEMBER 08:00 – 09:30

The roundtable will provide a platform for young people to engage directly with policymakers, innovators, researchers, academia, industry and society leaders and stakeholders in the National System of Innovation (NSI), articulating their vision for how STI can be leveraged to address pressing national issues.

In celebration of the SFSA 10th years anniversary, the 2025 Youth Roundtable dialogue will focus on harnessing youth-driven innovation as a direct response to societal and economic challenges, particularly in the context of the SFSA 2025 theme, which places STI at the heart of national development. Participants will be offered a platform to share their experience, aspirations, and concerns in navigating an innovation-driven society.

The DSTI Decadal Plan 2022-2030’s commitment to inclusive growth and job creation through STI necessitates active youth participation to ensure responsiveness to the needs and aspirations of young South Africans. The platform will also explore opportunities for inclusion in STI-led growth, discuss interventions to enable youth entrepreneurship, employability, and participation in the knowledge economy, including contributing ideas that inform the DSTI’s future flagship youth empowerment initiatives.

Measuring what matters: Innovation in Africa’s informal sector | 26 NOVEMBER, 13:00 – 14:30

Over the past few decades, governments and development agencies in Africa have embraced science, technology, and innovation (STI) as critical levers for development. Yet, a fundamental question persists: are we measuring what truly matters for Africa’s progress?

As a recent study by the Human Sciences Research Council (South Africa) and the National Centre for Technology Management (Nigeria) highlights, if innovation is to help solve Africa’s unique challenges—from youth unemployment and food insecurity to digital exclusion and climate vulnerability—then how and what we measure needs to change. Mainstream indicators like R&D expenditure and patent counts assume a formal, research-intensive model, overlooking the incremental, grassroots inventiveness and frugal solutions born of necessity that dominate African economies. Much of Africa’s impactful innovation happens “under the radar”—in farms, markets, workshops, and neighbourhoods—and rarely shows up in conventional data. This is not merely a visibility problem, but a conceptual mismatch; we are often using the wrong lens.

Why does this measurement gap matter? Because what we measure shapes what we fund, support, and ultimately, what we value. If African policymakers rely on indicators that ignore the informal sector or discount indigenous knowledge, they risk designing policies that miss large swathes of economic and social activity, undermining efforts towards the SDGs and, the AU STI Strategy for Africa (STISA-2034).

This panel session is a direct response to the Science Forum South Africa 2025 theme of “Building Research Capabilities for Africa.” It will bring together leading experts to explore pioneering efforts in adapting innovation surveys to informal businesses in countries like South Africa and Nigeria. The session will interrogate the conceptual and methodological challenges of measuring innovation in Africa’s unstructured environments, emphasising the urgent need to scale these initiatives and grow a critical mass of African scholars generating theory and evidence about innovation, for development in Africa. Our dialogue will chart a path towards developing relevant, inclusive metrics that truly reflect Africa’s innovative spirit, inform effective policy, and drive sustainable development, thereby strengthening the research foundation essential for STISA-2034.

Reimagining STI funding in South Africa: An ideathon toward a new investment horizon – 27 NOVEMBER, 13:30 – 15:30

South Africa faces a critical challenge of persistent under-investment in science, technology and innovation (STI), evidenced by a stagnant GERD as a percentage of GDP and a notable decline in private sector contributions. While the government remains the primary funder, fiscal constraints limit its capacity, creating a significant funding gap for national innovation aspirations. South African STI policy and planning aims to redress this gap.  This session moves beyond merely dissecting the trends to proactively explore how to recalibrate and invigorate South Africa’s STI funding landscape. It asks: What is the current composition of funding for STI in South Africa? Is it a “good mix”? To what extent does it strike a “good balance” for future needs?

 Based on the most recent national-level data, this panel will critically examine the current composition of STI funding, assessing whether the existing public-private mix and balance adequately serve South Africa’s innovation agenda. More importantly, it will open the floor for a new and refreshing conversation on options for diversifying and/or expanding investment, including perspectives from outside of South Africa. We will explore what different role-players, including government, established private sector companies, multinationals and OEMs, emerging tech firms, philanthropic organizations, and civil society, can bring to the table in terms of targeted support, accounting for firm heterogeneity and different types or modes of innovator (Kruss, Petersen and Kahn, 2024).

 The discussion will emphasize innovative financing mechanisms:

• Private capital markets: What reforms and incentives are needed to unleash the full potential of venture capital, private equity, and other capital market instruments to fuel South Africa’s R&D and innovation performance?

• Blended finance: How can strategic combinations of public (e.g. development finance) and private capital de-risk innovative ventures and attract new investment flows?

• Crowdsourcing: What potential do citizen and community-led funding models hold for grassroots innovation and early-stage STI projects?

• Development finance: How can Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), such as development banks, play a more catalytic role in scaling up critical STI initiatives with long-term societal impact?

• Philanthropic finance: How can philanthropic foundations and high-net-worth individuals contribute strategically to STI, particularly in areas of public good, early-stage research, and addressing societal challenges?

Innovation evidence: A South-South dialogue on measurement for development and diplomacy | 27 NOVEMBER, 15:25 – 16:55

The global innovation landscape is rapidly evolving, yet innovation measurement tools often lag behind, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. The Oslo Manual offers a common foundation for measuring innovation, but applying it in diverse national contexts—such as Brazil, India, and South Africa—poses both methodological challenges and opportunities for policy relevance.

This session positions innovation measurement practice as a “site” / vehicle for science diplomacy, where Brazil, India, and South Africa are not just adapting global frameworks but also shaping them through regional leadership, knowledge exchange, and mutual learning. These countries are at the forefront of rethinking innovation evidence in the Global South to better reflect the realities of their national and regional development pathways, and this dialogue offers insights into how middle-income countries can collectively influence global innovation measurement practice.

Through a South-South lens, the session will explore how innovation indicators can serve not only national policy but also regional integration, international collaboration, and inclusive global governance. The conversation will emphasise innovation measurement as both a technical and diplomatic frontier—where evidence building can strengthen multilateral relationships, support sustainable development, and contribute to a more balanced global science, technology and innovation ecosystem.

Future-focused research and innovation: Developmental, Capable and Ethical State

The Developmental, Capable and Ethical State division will be exhibiting some of its recent research outputs. View them here.

South African Public Relationship with Science survey

The HSRC’s work on the South African Public Relationship with Science survey (SAPRS) will be showcased at the HSRC exhibition stand. The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) was tasked by the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation with conducting a dedicated South African Public Relationship with Science (SAPRS) survey every five years. The purpose of the survey is to monitor the state of the public relationship with science in relation to knowledge, attitudes and engagement, as well as trends over time and comparisons with other countries. The first SAPRS survey was conducted in 2022. View the poster below: