16 Mar 2015

Government has undertaken several initiatives to encourage, support and nature engineering and innovative talent.

Minister of Infrastructure, Science and Technology, Mr Nonofo Molefhi said in Parliament on March 11 that this was done through the Botswana Innovation Hub, where strategic initiatives were pursued to foster technology development, entrepreneurship and innovation in priority sectors.

These, he said, included Southern Innovation Support Programme whose aim was to facilitate growth of the national innovation systems through capacity building, institutional support, learning from best practices and networking opportunities.

The other initiative was the establishment of technology transfer office by the Botswana Innovation Hub which supports capacity building and technology transfer through training, providing advisory service and assistance with intellectual property filing at the companies and Intellectual Property Authority.

Mr Molefhi further said the First Steps Venture Centre – a technology entrepreneurship programme has been put in place to help emerging innovators to test their assumptions and refine their business models.

The minister said these start-ups are offering pragmatic innovations in areas of agricultural applications, mobile money telephony, queue management, bio fuel, and education that potentially have positive socioeconomic impact upon completion of the programme.

The government has also provided resources to establish BIH Innovation Fund and it will provide seed and early stage funding to innovators and technology oriented ventures and thus encourage commercialization.

Mr Molefhi said alongside nurturing emerging talent, intellectual property protection support is being provided to researchers and engineers through the department for research, science and technology in collaboration with other stakeholders.

“This is done to encourage innovation and unlock potential wealth of research and development and innovation,” he said.

Mr Molefhi said his ministry in collaboration with Companies Intellectual Property Authority has embarked on an awareness raising campaign in research institutions, tertiary institutions, small enterprises as well as in schools to equip them with knowledge about the benefits of protection of intellectual property.

Gaborone Central MP, Dr Phenyo Butale, had wanted to know if government has taken any steps to encourage and support engineering talent as exhibited by the young man in Kasane who built a mini aircraft and by the Botswana Technology Centre team that constructed a demo car. ENDS