South Africa’s Research and Innovation Ecosystem Strengthening Deep Dive

South Africa has a robust innovation ecosystem and has instruments and infrastructure in place to support the ecosystem. Unlike other countries supported by RISA, most of policies, guidelines and funding instruments are in place. There is however a low rate of translating research into products and services. Some of the supported projects were able to bridge the gap between innovation and uptake. However, these were at pilot scale. The RISA Fund supported six organisations in South Africa with the aim of strengthening the innovation ecosystem. Across the portfolio, projects demonstrated proof of concept, but scale remains the critical next step — the Intini project, for example, needs to reach beyond the handful of communities initially engaged, while DIMA Health's pilot ran in only two health facilities over six months. For future programming, the key lessons are to focus on a few sectors, limit scope, allow sufficient runway for development and buy-in, and collaborate closely with local funding agencies to secure follow-on support.