South Africa will set aside funding to support science and technology initiatives with Ethiopia, to ensure the success of collaboration between the two countries.

Speaking in Addis Ababa on Thursday, 6 November, the Minister of Science and Technology, Naledi Pandor, said collaboration between the two countries would not materialise unless both countries were prepared to fund and seed some of the initiatives.

The Minister was speaking after signing a bilateral agreement with the Ethiopian Minister of Science and Technology, Demitu Hambisa.The details and amounts of this joint venture will be discussed during a senior officials meeting on a later date.

“We believe that such agreements bring us closer to addressing our common development challenges and to fully exploiting our scientific and technological capability. After all science and technology is at the centre of knowledge-based activities,” said Minister Pandor.

While the details of the plan of action are being worked out, the Minister said both countries should focus energies on addressing well known challenges.

“Human capital development must be prioritised. The implementation of the agreement must focus on training students and researchers in critical skills. To that end I look forward to a student-exchange programme that will begin to address shortages in skills. We must also strengthen our research network, collaboration and joint publication. In that regard, I hope more will be done to strengthen our science academia.”

With agriculture important to both countries, for food security and as a source of export revenue, it is hoped investment in joint research and development programmes in bio-sciences will be made, focusing on crop and animal research and agro-processing.

Palaeosciences is another aspect of possible collaboration and sharing experiences in exploiting indigenous knowledge systems between the two countries.

The signing of the agreement will be followed by the development of joint action plans, detailing specific areas of cooperation to be implemented in the 2015/16 financial year.

South Africa and Ethiopia’s scientific relations began this year, with several other areas of mutual interest identified, including information and communication technologies, training of technicians, centres of excellence and the exchange of scientists and researchers.