Bright idea: SA can have one system for science, innovation and enterprise

South Africa doesn’t have a shortage of brilliant ideas. Our universities and science councils produce a growing stream of accredited research each year, yet too little of it becomes home-grown products, factories, export orders and jobs. 

In a labour market, where the official unemployment rate is 33.2% (Q2 2025), we can’t afford a National System of Innovation, which leaves research, innovation funding and entrepreneurship support working in parallel rather than in concert.

The numbers tell the story. After the pandemic dip, research and development (R&D) intensity recovered only to 0.61% of GDP in 2022-23, a level that has barely moved in a decade and is far below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average of about 2.7%. We are investing, but not nearly at the scale that turns ideas into industries.

Meanwhile, publication output is booming; accredited university publication units climbed from 7,230 (2005) to 23,777 (2023). But the commercial signal is weak. Resident patenting has trended down, with most applications coming from non-resident patent filings at the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission. That is the definition of a leaky pipeline: knowledge created here, value realised elsewhere.

The government has shown it can rationalise where it matters. In October 2024, the Small Enterprise Finance Agency, the Small Enterprise Development Agency and the Cooperative Banks Development Agency merged into SEDFA, a single, integrated micro, small and medium enterprises support body. Now we need the same clarity in the research-to-market chain. 

A practical blueprint is a one front door, one pipeline, shared accountability and outcomes. Here is a system that would work and is within our reach.

(1) Create an umbrella “South African Research, Innovation & Enterprise Agency” (SARIEA).

Think UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), but South African: a holding body with a single front door, shared data and standard metrics from Technology Readiness Level (TRL)-1 (curiosity-driven research) to TRL-9 (products/services in market). SARIEA would have four integrated pillars:

• Research South Africa (merge functions, not brands): Keep the National Research Foundation’s (NRF’s) excellence-driven mandate for discovery science, human capital and research infrastructure intact, but seat it as a pillar inside SARIEA with joint key performance indicators and shared programme planning.
• Innovate South Africa (translation to market): Merge the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) with national “gap-funding” and proof-of-concept instruments and align with science councils on translational programmes. This pillar owns TRL-3 to TRL-8 support (seed, development, pre-commercialisation) with predictable, time-boxed turnaround standards. 
• Enterprise South Africa (scale and market access): house SEDFA as the scale-up arm so firms don’t fall into the “valley of death”. Co-design export readiness with the department of trade, industry and competition, link to the Industrial Development Corporation and private-sector venture capital (private VC), and align standards/regulatory pathways (South African Bureau of Standards, South African Health Products Regulatory Authority) for priority sectors. 
• Intellectual & Commercialisation Office (IPCO-SA): integrate the National Intellectual Property Management Office (NIPMO) and a national tech-transfer support team. Standardise TTO policies, speed up IP decisions, and launch a searchable IP marketplace so local firms can license South African-funded IP easily.

(2) One application, staged funding.

Applicants enter once and progress across stages. The program offers NRF-type grants for knowledge creation, TIA-style gap funding for prototypes, and SEDFA instruments for first customers and working capital. Automatic hand-offs between pillars ensure a seamless process, eliminating hand-offs to nowhere.

3) Buy what we want to see (mission-driven procurement).

Dedicate a small, ring-fenced slice of departmental procurement to challenge grants (health diagnostics, grid tech, water, agro-processing). This is how many countries bring solutions to market faster, through public procurement as the first reference customer. (The 2019 White Paper on Science, Technology and Innovation and the STI Decadal Plan both anticipate tighter coordination; this makes it concrete.)

4) Tie money to outcomes, not activities.

Agree on a handful of KPIs for SARIEA’s board and for each pillar: time-to-decision, time-to-first-customer, number of scale-ups and deep-tech start-ups backed, licensing deals signed, procurement pilots completed, and crowd-in of private capital per rand of public spend.

5) Fund it predictably and adequately.

Commit to a glidepath that lifts GERD to 1.0% of GDP by 2030, then beyond. The OECD average is 2.7%; we don’t need to match it overnight, but we do need to move decisively.

What universities must do now?

Idea-to-Industry Spine (I2I Spine): a joined-up, staged pathway that assigns every project a Technology Readiness Level (TRL), a case manager, and standard hand-offs from TRL-1 (discovery) to TRL-9 (market), so research, translational funding, and enterprise support run as one pipeline with shared data and time-boxed decisions. 

Universities must build their half by rewiring incentives, processes and capacity: update promotion/tenure/workload to value patents, licences, spin-outs, standards work and policy-relevant evidence alongside indexed papers; create entrepreneurial sabbaticals and industry joint appointments; ring-fence a share of indirect for prototyping and regulatory readiness; install faculty translation leads and a triage desk to assign TRLs, case managers and 30-day go/no-go calls; standardise founder-friendly spin-out terms, pre-approve IP clauses/NDAs, and publish SLAs for TTO turnaround; embed venture-studio courses and Founders-as-Work (FaW) Credits with first-customer readiness (QA, packaging, costing) as assessed outcomes; act as anchor markets by opening campuses as testbeds with clear pilot pathways and reserving a slice of procurement for challenge buys in mission areas; broker regional consortia of UoTs, TVETs, science councils and municipalities to land first users; publish I2I dashboards (time-to-decision, licences, pilots, private capital crowded-in) to drive performance; mobilise alumni angel syndicates and corporate venture partners, professionalise industry liaison with commercial targets; and share project metadata to the national portal so hand-offs to SARIEA are automatic — don’t wait for policy; organise the pipeline and move ideas to invoices.

In short, this reform is not a new mega-bureaucracy; it’s a single front door and a standard playbook for parts we already fund. We keep basic science ring-fenced (peer-reviewed, curiosity-driven budgets protected) but fix the hand-offs by seating NRF and TIA under one umbrella with shared stage-gates, while treating SEDFA as the enterprise/scale-up arm. NIPMO, standards bodies, and regulators remain independent to avoid conflicts, and are bound through formal compacts and fast-track pathways for mission projects. We pull solutions to market through first-buyer, pre-commercial procurement, and crowd-in capital through an IDC co-investment fund, thereby de-risking public money and scaling private investment. 

Costs are managed by re-programming existing envelopes and back-office consolidation, with a predictable glidepath toward 1% of GDP for R&D by 2030. Benefits extend beyond Gauteng through regional mission nodes (for example, hydrogen/energy, health tech, water/agri) and targeted quotas for UoTs, Technical and Vocational Education and Training colleges, township,and rural innovators, aligned with broad-based black economic empowerment and black-industrialist outcomes. 

This is what comparable countries did, such as UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), Business Finland, Singapore’s RIE system, and the lesson is consistent: one pipeline, one playbook, one accountable centre. If, within a year, we don’t see faster decisions, visible pilots and co-funded scale-ups, then the reform has not earned its keep.

This does work elsewhere and here’s how others integrated the pipeline

• In 2018, the UK merged seven research councils, Innovate UK and Research England into UKRI to coordinate discovery science and innovation under one roof. In 2023-24, UKRI operated with a £9.6 billion budget and processed 28,866 grant applications, scale and orchestration that matter.
• Business Finland (formed from Tekes + Finpro). A single agency now delivers R&D grants, export services and investment promotion. In 2024 alone, Business Finland issued €761 million in funding and estimated 12,100 jobs created/maintained at client companies; its clients report substantial gains in exports and productivity, because the same agency helps invent, sell and scale. 
• RIE2025 with NRF, A*STAR and Enterprise Singapore. Singapore ties discovery research (A*STAR), translation and enterprise support (EnterpriseSG) to a national S$25 billion (2021–2025) RIE plan. In 2022, EnterpriseSG supported 18,100 firms, with an estimated S$17.8 billion in value-added and 23,800 skilled jobs—evidence that integration plus patient, multi-year budgeting moves the dial.
• Innovation Fund Denmark created to unify research and innovation instruments, it funds everything from strategic research to entrepreneurship under one banner, reducing duplication and speeding translation. 
• Israel Innovation Authority is a single public agency that manages innovation policy and programmes across the firm lifecycle, incubators, grants, and growth funds, explicitly designed to integrate academia, startups and industry. 

These models differ in politics and scale, but they share a crucial design principle: one pipeline, one playbook, one accountable centre.

What we should merge (and what we shouldn’t)

• Bring together the funders and the “hand-off points”, not the performers.

Merge TIA’s translational instruments and national gap funds into the Innovate SA pillar; seat NRF as Research SA under the same SARIEA board and data system (no need to rename brands that work). Fold NIPMO into IPCO-SA for end-to-end IP stewardship. Keep SEDFA whole, but place it inside SARIEA’s umbrella to co-plan pipelines and targets with the other pillars. Science councils and universities stay independent as knowledge producers, but fund programmes jointly across pillars.

• Hard-wire the front door. A single online portal assigns each application a TRL and a case manager; movement across pillars happens by rule, not by luck or personal networks.
• Use procurement and regulation as growth levers. Standards bodies and regulators (SABS, SAHPRA) co-design fast-tracks for priority tech; departments commit small challenge budgets to become first buyers.

The policy intent is already written down. The 2019 White Paper on STI and the STI Decadal Plan (2022–2032) both call for a more coherent, impact-oriented National System of Innovation. The merger that created SEDFA shows consolidation is possible. What remains is to align the research engine (NRF), the translation engine (TIA), the enterprise engine (SEDFA) and the IP rules (NIPMO) around one mission and shared accountability. If we take that approach and secure stable funding, South Africa could start seeing as many new products as research papers, and as many new jobs as there are journal articles.

Fulufhelo Nemavhola is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation and Engagement at the Durban University of Technology. Any views or opinions expressed herein are made in his personal capacity only. They shall not be attributed to, or construed as representing, the views, policies or positions of the Durban University of Technology, its council, senate, management or affiliates.