By Lebone Rodah Mosima
South Africa wants to expand its scientific and technological cooperation with China beyond research and into industry, with a focus on commercialising innovations, protecting intellectual property and ensuring that scientific breakthroughs benefit communities.
Deputy Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation Nomalungelo Gina said the two countries were collaborating in several sectors, including mining, space science, agricultural innovation and human capital development.
Speaking ahead of the 2026 China-Africa Innovation Cooperation and Development Forum on Tuesday, Gina said the partnership had made progress in several areas but needed to place greater emphasis on translating research into practical applications.
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“We’ve got quite a number of collaborations that we’re doing with them,” she said.
She highlighted cooperation in space science, particularly with China’s Hubei province, as one of the areas of collaboration.
On human capital development, Gina said the two countries had an annual student exchange programme involving 10 students from each country.
The programme allows students to access each other’s expertise, infrastructure and research facilities, including laboratories, while strengthening institutional ties.
Although she described the exchange programme as successful, Gina said a major challenge remained ensuring that scientific collaboration progressed beyond the research stage.
“Most of the time we collaborate and end up at the level of the research, but now we want to advance with China,” she said.
She said the next phase of cooperation should focus on moving research into prototype development, innovation and industrial application.
Gina identified commercialisation and intellectual property (IP) protection as key priorities, saying scientists needed to be protected and benefit from the knowledge and innovations they developed.
“Firstly, how do we protect the IP, the knowledge that they have?” she said.
She said South Africa was working with intellectual property agencies and seeking to strengthen cooperation with China to address challenges around commercialising research.
Gina said the ultimate objective was to ensure that scientific research produced practical solutions to challenges facing communities rather than remaining confined to laboratories.
“We strongly believe that science is to bring solutions to the challenges that our communities have faced with,” she said.
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“We don’t want to have those challenges, those solutions, just ending up with the laboratories, but how do we take them out to the industry so that people can benefit from the work that our scientists do.”
Beyond commercialisation, she identified space science as another important area of cooperation, pointing to South Africa’s capabilities in the sector and collaboration involving the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).
Agricultural innovation and food security were also among the areas in which the two countries could deepen cooperation, particularly through improved agricultural processes and food processing.
Gina said mining offered further opportunities for collaboration, with South Africa’s mineral resources complementing China’s scientific and technological capabilities.
She described the partnership as mutually beneficial and said South Africa valued its continued cooperation with China across various fields.
