Science, technology and innovation indicators for the bioeconomy in South Africa : a scientometric assessment

Abstract

The South African Cabinet approved the South African Bioeconomy Strategy in 2013. This was followed by the launch of the Strategy in January 2014 by the Department of Science and Innovation. Bioeconomy is a recent term following the term biotechnology and encompasses activities that make use of bio-innovations based on biological sources, materials and processes to generate sustainable economic, social and environmental development. The vision is for South Africa’s bioeconomy to be a significant contributor to the country’s economy by 2030 in terms of the gross domestic product (GDP). This document provides science, technology and innovation indicators to monitor the implementation of the South African Bioeconomy Strategy as recommended by the National Advisory Council on Innovation in South Africa.

The study firstly provides an analysis of bioeconomy indicators in general and discusses sources of available literature from the following databases: Web of Science, Scopus, EconLit and Social Science Premium Collection. Within the bioeconomy definition, biotechnology is a common thread, however, the scope and measuring of the bioeconomy goes beyond the technology. Efforts by countries in measuring the bioeconomy at the policy level have been based on growth measures such as the contribution to GDP, however, such an approach offers an incomplete picture as it omits the environmental and social impacts of the bioeconomy. The results from the selected journal articles highlight that most academic papers discuss indicators of social, economic and environmental sustainability, yet there remains a gap as to how these interdependent sectors should be linked in order to develop a uniform methodology to measure all the aspects included in the bioeconomy. From the conclusion, the bioeconomy can be defined as the system that contributes to economic, social and technological development and is conducted without the depletion of natural resources.

A comparison of changes in inputs as compared to changes in output over time will allow an assessment of the efficiency of the bioeconomy innovation system (e.g. if outputs grow more rapidly than inputs, the efficiency increases). The next components of the study focus on bioeconomy gross expenditure on research and development (R&D), business expenditure on R&D and the number of R&D personnel in the bioeconomy. These are key measures of inputs in the bioeconomy. The number of publications, patents and firms, and the value of exports in the bioeconomy were measured. These are key measures of outputs in the bioeconomy. The number of publications, patents and exports values are outlined for South Africa and compared with Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRICS) and, to a certain extent, with Egypt, Nigeria, Germany, Malaysia and the United States of America (USA).

The results show higher growth rates for resources committed for R&D in the bioeconomy compared to that of total research expenditures in South Africa. The growth rate for researchers in headcounts in bioeconomy were low compared to the growth rates for researchers in headcounts across all fields in South Africa. South Africa ranked last in the BRICS group in terms of the number of bioeconomy publications produced in the selected period and had a world share of 0.8%, which is higher than the national research average of 0.5%. The citations growth for South African bioeconomy publications increased by 6.8%, higher than Brazil, Russia and world citations during the period under review. The University of Cape Town is a leader in bioeconomy publications in South Africa, followed by University of Stellenbosch and the University of KwaZulu-Natal with majority of the publications on environmental sciences ecology. South Africa collaborates the most with institutions from the United States of America in bioeconomy research and the percent of international collaboration is similar to that of national scientific publications. South Africa experienced a decline in bioeconomy industry collaboration publications during this period. South Africa ranked last in the BRICS group but perfomed superior than Egypt and Nigeria in terms of the number of bioeconomy patents. The total patents citations for all BRICS members generally decreased and there were inconsistent growth rates observed. The important innovators of South Africa in this field are mainly universities and public research institutions as compared to other members of BRICS and Egypt which are dominated by private entities. Incentives that encourage collaboration between universities, research institutions and local innovation firms are required for the full realisation of South Africa’s Bioeconomy Strategy. There were 730 active bioeconomy firms in South Africa as of January 2021. South African gross exports total for bioeconomy industry sectors considered in this study were generally small compared to other members of BRICS. South Africa requires total growth of its innovative products and production processes.