The CSIR collaborates with national, provincial and local government in the quest to attain national outcomes such as improving service delivery and alleviating poverty and inequality. Our imperative is to identify key determinants of poverty, inequality and unemployment and draw the link between our research work and addressing these determining factors.

Some of the collaborations with government include:

Improving water resource management in Richards Bay through scientific and technological collaboration

The deteriorating quality of raw water in South Africa, coupled with current water shortages, has created a need to protect the country’s water resources and ensure effective water and wastewater management. The CSIR and the City of uMhlathuze have partnered to improve water resource management across the city’s jurisdiction through the application of scientific and technological solutions.

The partnership between the CSIR and the municipality is viewed as a valuable approach to addressing water-related service delivery issues. Projects undertaken were aimed at identifying and addressing issues relating to various aspects of water provision and management. The identified primary issues pertained to improving natural resource management whereby the municipality enforced pollution prevention, water resource protection and rehabilitation measures as recommended by the CSIR. For instance, the CSIR developed a lake management plan for Lake Mzingazi, as well as a rehabilitation plan for a compromised stream within the municipality.

Developing a waste RDI roadmap

In 2012, the Department of Science and Technology and the CSIR embarked on a process to develop a waste Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) roadmap to guide South Africa’s public and private sector investment in waste RDI over the next 10 years. The roadmap was published in early 2015. With an investment ask of approximately R3.9 billion over the next 10 years, the successful implementation of the roadmap is expected to assist government and industry in significantly increasing the diversion of waste away from landfills towards value-adding alternatives, through more effective decision making, faster insertion of context-appropriate technology, strengthened RDI capability and capacity and the transfer of know-how and technology.