On Wednesday, 8 July 2026, at the Emperors Palace Convention Centre in the City of Ekurhuleni, South Africa opened a new chapter in its national conversation on science, technology and innovation. The Inaugural ST&I Public Lecture convened under the theme “A Public-Private Partnership Model for Science and Innovation” brought together approximately 400 delegates from government, business, academia, research institutions and civil society. It was my honour, at the close of that evening, to preside over the official launch of the ST&I Business Forum, the platform whose founding vision the Lecture so powerfully affirmed.
The timing was deliberate. The Lecture took place during National Science Month, observed throughout July under the theme “Science, Technology and Innovation are for Everyone”, a sentiment that captures precisely what the Forum exists to advance. We were deeply encouraged that the Portfolio Committee on Science, Technology and Innovation publicly welcomed both the Lecture and the launch of the Forum, and that its Chairperson, Ms Lusizo Makhubela, participated in the proceedings.
A national conversation of substance
The evening’s intellectual anchor was Professor Rodney Priestley of Princeton University, who joined us through our partnership with Princeton’s Africa World Initiative. His central argument deserves to be restated plainly: the great innovation economies of the world were not accidents of history, but the product of deliberate, sustained policy choices that treated long-term investment in scientific research as an investment in national prosperity. Universities, on this account, are not merely centres of teaching and research but are engines of entrepreneurship, technology transfer and economic development, provided they are connected to government and industry through robust, patient partnerships.
Ms Zamanzima Mazibuko-Makena, Senior Researcher at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA), brought that argument home to South African soil. Her account of Optimal Energy and the Joule electric vehicle, a technologically celebrated venture that could not secure the capital required for large-scale manufacturing was a sobering reminder that scientific excellence alone does not guarantee commercial success. Our challenge, as she put it, is not a shortage of ideas, it is the absence of an innovation ecosystem capable of carrying those ideas from the laboratory into society. That single insight is, in many respects, the founding thesis of the ST&I Business Forum.
The Honourable Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Professor Blade Nzimande, addressed delegates on the role of business in building an inclusive National System of Innovation. His presence affirmed that the objectives we pursue are aligned with the policy architecture established through the 2019 White Paper on Science, Technology and Innovation and the Decadal Plan (2022–2032). Yet business expenditure on research and development continues to fall short of national policy targets and the Forum regards the mobilisation of that investment as central to its mandate.
The voices of industry
What distinguished this Lecture from many gatherings of its kind was the depth and honesty of the industry reflections. Dr Stavros Nicolaou of Aspen Pharmacare Holdings, Dr Sybil Seoka of Ample Resources and the PPS Holdings Trust, Ms Lena Miranda of Linköping Science Park in Sweden, and Mr Andrew Khutso Msiza of Sasol each brought a lifetime of practice to the podium.
Dr Nicolaou reminded us that in South Africa, innovation, industrialisation and manufacturing are inseparable and that they must develop together if the continent is to reduce its dependence on imported medicines and build genuine pharmaceutical sovereignty. Dr Seoka insisted that innovation is not an end in itself and it delivers impact only when knowledge, capability, leadership and implementation are aligned around communities. Ms Miranda, drawing on Sweden’s decades-long experience, offered a lesson our policymakers would do well to internalise that private investment rarely comes first; it follows confidence in institutions, in people, and in long-term political commitment. The core key message is that sustained collaboration between government, business, academia and society is the only credible path to innovation-led, inclusive growth.
From dialogue to delivery
The ST&I Business Forum was not launched to add another talk shop to the national calendar. The Lecture was designed from the outset to move beyond discussion: its proceedings will be published, a structured policy brief distilling its findings will be submitted to the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation, and a formal commitments register will hold all of us, the Forum included accountable for what we undertook in that room.
I record the Forum’s profound gratitude to our strategic media partner, the Mail & Guardian, and its Chief Executive Officer, Mr Hoosain Karjieker, to the Africa World Initiative at Princeton University, to the Africa Innovation Council and to the sponsors whose confidence made the evening possible.
The inaugural edition was only the beginning. Between those milestones, the Forum’s working groups will pursue the harder, quieter work which is growing private-sector investment in research and development, advancing public-private partnerships, supporting commercialisation, and building the skills base on which an innovation economy depends.
On 8 July, South Africa demonstrated that its scientists, its entrepreneurs, its legislators and its Ministers can share a platform and a purpose. The task now is to hold that purpose steady over years. History has dealt this country both its wounds and its extraordinary gifts, and no amount of regret will alter what has already been written. But what is written next, the industries we build, the researchers we back, the young people we equip, the partnerships we honour remains entirely within our hands. That conviction is inscribed in the Forum’s motto, and it was the spirit in which 400 delegates left Emperors Palace that evening: We cannot change the past. We can shape the future.