The Eastern Cape, said premier Noxolo Kiviet, is regarded as the worst-performing province, but "we forget what it inherited. "We expect it to be on par with everyone else when the starting line was not the same."
The Eastern Cape was formed in 1994 out of the apartheid "homelands" of the Ciskei and Transkei and the eastern part of what was then the Cape province.
It sprawls over 169 000kms2 and has a population of around 6.5-million people. Its capital is Bisho and it has two metropolitan municipalities — Nelson Mandela Bay and Buffalo City. Its largest cities are Port Elizabeth and East London.
It is one of the country's poorest provinces, but its infrastructural resources — two harbours, airports, road and rail infrastructure — have seen it earmarked as a key area for growth and development.
"We vigorously go out to canvas for opportunities like that offered by the Global Forum on Innovation and Technology Entrepreneurship that will help us connect with better ideas on how to change the situation and improve it, but also opportunities to ensure we market our province," said Kiviet.
Going all out for more opportunities
Over 90 countries attended the conference in East London. Kiviet said this was an opportunity to connect with people and build lasting partnerships, particularly for the community of the Eastern Cape. MEC for Economic Development, Environmental Affairs and Tourism Mcebisi Jonas said the other opportunity that was presented was in tourism. "By the sheer number of people coming to the province, the global forum presents an enormous contribution from a tourism point of view; we have about 800 people here."
Kiviet said: "This conference is about innovation, and a number of ideas and experiences of other countries will help us to perform better in challenging areas, especially with regard to education, health and agriculture. If we strengthen those [areas] the issue of job creation becomes the outcome of those efforts."
She said that this was the reason why so much effort was put into hosting global forums such as this one.
"For us it means job opportunities for the unemployed, partnerships, better ideas, investment opportunities, tourism opportunities, a host of advantages for the province. That's why we won't stop."
Jonas added: "If you look at the economy of the Eastern Cape, it's driven by the automotive sector. Therefore manufacturing's dominant sub-sector is automotive and there has been a major decline in manufacturing outside of that in the province.
"The fact that we have four universities also gives us an advantage. Over the past 18 months we started a programme to look at how to diversify our manufacturing sector, and a few things have emerged. "Firstly, we must better co-ordinate provincial innovation. We need to consolidate it into one system with the private sector, universities, and government departments to ensure we tap into the technology [that is] emerging provincially." Jonas said it was an interesting exercise "because [we] were able to create a database of innovations coming out of the system".
"The second question we asked was how can we support innovation as government? And we've created two science and technology parks: the Nelson Mandela Science and Technology Park at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and the eMonti Science and Technology Park in East London."
Molding future entrepeneaurs
Jonas said that the government was putting a lot of focus on renewable energy, and that the province's universities were producing great technologies in hydro, wind and other renewable energy areas.
"We're hoping the SciTech parks [will] take them to commercialisation and be able to support entrepreneurs with patent rights and commercialisation.
"That's what tech parks are supposed to do, but we're also creating incubation facilities and providing support and infrastructure on an ongoing basis for new entrepreneurs."
Kiviet said that the provincial strategy was aimed at development in education, health, agriculture and job creation. Jonas commented that infodev, a global funding programme managed by the World Bank, was the perfect platform to solidify new partnerships.
"The use of technology in education to drive and promote educational outcomes is an area we're playing particular focus on — we have programmes in parts of the province dealing with schools and teachers, and training them to use technology."
Enhancing school education through technology
The department of science and technology (DST) currently has projects in place to assist the province in promoting technology in schools.
One such project is seeing tablets being distributed to schools in Cofimvaba, in the rural Eastern Cape close to Queenstown, through the Cofimvaba district schools technology project.
DST director general Dr Phil Mjwara said: "We would like to see how this technology could be used to enhance learning. Currently the programme is being run as a pilot with the CSIR's Meraka Institute, the department of basic education and the provincial department of education to see if technology can be used to enhance learning and how teachers can better provide learning and content to kids."
"Phase one of the pilot has seen 16 tablets provided to staff and management, secure charging stations installed, a WiFi network rolled out and free SIM cards provided by Cell C.
A content server has been provided and content is being developed by the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University's Govan Mbeki Mathematics Unit.
"If the pilot is successful funding would be provided to scale the project up and out, from the Nciba Circuit where the pilot will ultimately extend, throughout the province, and potentially nationally."
He said that existing technology was also being used and looked at to take products to enterprises where it will benefit society. He said the department was working with small enterprises and also provided infrastructure in Kwanabuhle to extract essential oils from plants.
Jonas said the province was looking at bio-prospecting — creating the capacity to analyse the plant species in the province and analyse their uses. "The partnership with infoDev will help stimulate that process further."