Abstract
South Africa has only irregularly undertaken exercises to identify priority technology areas, despite government recognition of their importance. The earliest prioritization exercise was undertaken in the early 1990s. In the early 2000s, the Department of Arts Culture, Science and Technology announced the results of the National Research and Technology Foresight. One of the key implications of these results was that South African stakeholders fail to recognize the importance of emerging technologies in contrast to the rest of the world.
This article reviews past efforts in this field in South Africa and reports the findings of the most recent effort supported by the Department of Trade and Industry to identify changes in industrialists’ opinions related to technology priorities. The recent results indicate that the country is integrating into the global economy, as national priorities are converging with priorities elsewhere. Policy issues are identified and discussed.
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Acknowledgement
The paper is a revised and developed version of a previously published paper by Pouris A., Raphasha P. (2015) Priorities Setting with Foresight in South Africa. Foresight and STI Governance, vol. 9, no 3, pp. 68–81 with permission from Foresight and STI Governance journal (http://foresight-journal.hse.ru/en/).
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Pouris, A., Raphasha, P. (2016). Research Priorities and Foresight Exercises in South Africa: Review and Recent Results. In: Gokhberg, L., Meissner, D., Sokolov, A. (eds) Deploying Foresight for Policy and Strategy Makers. Science, Technology and Innovation Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25628-3_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25628-3_7
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