The state visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to South Africa this week, was preceeded by a grassroots innovation workshop between South Africa and India on 6 and 7 July 2016. The two countries share an interest in the development of grassroots innovations that can provide the affordable and accessible technological solutions needed by both countries.

The workshop explored opportunities for cooperation and will conclude with the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the two countries to formalise cooperation on grassroots innovation. The MoU will cover technology demonstration, training, capacity building, sharing of open-source technologies and joint product development, with a focus on grassroots innovation in selected areas such as agricultural technology and indigenous knowledge systems.

Notable advances have been made in sustainable grassroots innovation, though there is still mileage to cover particularly on how our instruments and infrastructure responds to all types of innovation production across the spectrum- age, gender, economic status and location.

Director of India’s National Innovation Foundation, Dr Vipin Kumar said that similar to South Africa, India has achieved considerable success in technology but the technological needs and ideas of people in rural areas are neglected. There is a need to incubate and convert the ideas into products he added.

2016 marks the 20th anniversary of bilateral cooperation in science and technology between South Africa and India. A series of special events will thus be organised throughout the year to celebrate this strategic partnership, including at the upcoming Science Forum South Africa to be hosted by the Department of Science and Technology in Pretoria in December 2016.

In addition to grassroots innovation, South Africa and India collaborate on a range of scientific domains, such as the fight against infectious diseases and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) global radio telescope project.