COFISA: Foresight
for Provincial Innovation
Western Cape
A Baseline Data Snapshot
Lord Charles Hotel, Somerset West, 13th November 2007
Peter Greenwood & Bob Day
Non-Zero-Sum Development

Data sources
• COFISA baseline data study
– In progress for E Cape, W Cape and Gauteng (IsambuloAMI)
– Meta-data for ~800 datasets, at different degrees of
disaggregation
– CeSTII innovation data disaggregated to provincial level by
December
• Western Cape baseline data
– Only ~180 datasets currently (freely) available with data that
is disaggregated down to the province or finer
– Our sources for Western Cape:
• Human Sciences Research Council
• Statistics South Africa
• Western Cape Provincial Government

Topics
• Population, Poverty and Basic Services
• Education
• Western Cape PGDS
• Industry
• Research and Development

Population, Poverty
and Basic Services

Western Cape
population growth
6
5
WC Population (millions)
4
3
2
1
0
1996 2001 2007
Year

Population by age group
Western Cape
South Africa

Age distribution W Cape
Black African
Coloured
White Indian/Asian

Net loss or gain of people in each province
through inter-provincial migration over the five
years preceding October 2001
500000
400000
300000
Population
200000
100000
0
-100000
-200000
-300000 EC LP FS KZN MP NC NW WC GP
-400000
Province
Source: Statistics South Africa, Census 2001

Urban and non-urban
distribution by province

%age urban:
W Cape and SA

Age Dependency

%age of households
with mains electricity

%age of households with
access to piped water

%age of households
using bucket or no toilets

%age of households
with municipal refuse removal

Education

Percentage school
attendance of 7-15 year olds

University growth points:
Publications
• University of Cape Town • University of Stellenbosch
– Earth Sciences – Chemical Sciences
– Mechanical and Industrial Engineering – Biological Sciences
– Civil Engineering – Physical Sciences
– Architecture and Urban Environment – Agricultural, Veterinary and Environmental
– Human Movement and Sport Science Sciences
– Public Health and Health Services – Industrial Biotechnology and Food
– Immunology Sciences
– Economics and Business – Medicine
– Medical Physiology
– Medical Biochemistry and Clinical
Chemistry
– Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical
• University of the Western Cape Sciences
– Chemical Sciences – Immunology
– Biological Sciences – Economics and Business
– Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
– Biomedical Engineering (incl. Biomedical
Technology)
– Information, Computing and
Communication Sciences

Western Cape
Provincial Growth and
Development Plan

Provincial innovation
systems in South Africa
“But what emerges from the work so far
suggests that regional or local innovation
systems exist, if at all, only in Gauteng and
Western Cape, and possibly in KZN, but
nowhere else.”
REGIONAL AND LOCAL INNOVATION SYSTEMS A study on
behalf of NACI
March 2007 (unpublished)
So: an innovation system probably exists in
the Western Cape, but only just!

Western Cape
PGDS (and PAMTS)
• Emphasises
– All development is a function of knowledge
– Regional innovation system;
– University - industry linkages
– Sectoral programmes; horizontal strategies
• But
– More work required to establish how and where
provincial competences in knowledge-intensive
activities can combine in support of innovation

Industry

Industrial
specialisations
(Provincial share >20% of national total)
• Gauteng • Western Cape
– Manufacturing – Agriculture, forestry and
• Metals, metal products, fishing
machinery, equipment – Food, beverages and
• Other non-metal mineral tobacco
products – Textiles, clothing and
• Electrical machinery and leather goods
apparatus – Finance and business
• Radio, TV, instruments, services
watches, clocks
• Furniture and other
manufacturing
– Construction • Eastern Cape
– Wholesale and retail trade, – Transport equipment
catering and
accommodation
– Finance and business
services

Farming operations
(2001)

Gross agricultural
income

Research &
Development (R&D)

Knowledge intensity
and innovation
• Industrial activity • Patents: IOM
– Agriculture, forestry and – Agriculture, hunting, and
fishing related service activities
• Patents: SOU
– Growing of vegetables,
horticultural specialties and
• R&D investments nursery products
– Growing of crops; market – Growing of fruit, nuts,
gardening; horticulture beverage and spice crops
– Forestry, logging and
related service activities

Technology
Achievement Index (TAI)
The provincial TAIs ranking as follows:
• Top:
Gauteng, Western Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal
• Average:
Mpumalanga, Free State, and North West
• Bottom:
Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, and Limpopo
(DST 2005, 28)

Summary
These data seem to indicate that:
• Other provinces’ most productive (& innovative?)
people migrating to Western Cape (& Gauteng)
• Origin of poverty rural – urban poverty inherited
• W Cape has lowest levels of poverty in RSA
• Many growth areas in HEIs, but how relevant to
needs of RSA (poverty and exports)?
• More work needed to turn (many?) provincial
knowledge-intensive competencies into innovation
• 90% urban population, few farming units, yet most
productive agricultural sector in RSA (high exports)
• R&D focus on agriculture, forestry and fishing. Is
more diversity needed?

Thank
You
bday@scientia.co.za

Formal sector employment
growth 1999-2004

Age Dependency

Net in-migration
to the WC

%age of households
with access to piped water

%age of households
with access to piped water

Educational attainment
20+ years (2001)

• Three provinces – Eastern Cape, Free State, and Northern Province – are not
specialised in any economic activity where the provincial share in the national total
reaches 20 per cent. Even if the threshold had been set at ten per cent, they would
hardly show up, with the exception of community, social and personal services in the
Eastern Cape and mining in the Northern Cape. Another three provinces –
Mpumalanga, Limpopo, and North West – are specialised in one and the same
activity, namely mining. The Western Cape is specialised in agriculture, forestry, and
fishing, and in finance and business services. KwaZulu Natal has three
specialisations and Gauteng four. These two provinces are the only ones with
specialisations in manufacturing (see Figure 1).
• When secondary activities are disaggregated, Eastern Cape and Western Cape
contribute with specialisations in transport equipment, reflecting the automobile
industry around East London and Port Elizabeth, and food and beverages as well as
textiles in the Cape. Mainstays of KZN manufacturing with national importance are
food, beverages, and tobacco; textiles, clothing, and leather goods; wood and paper;
publishing and printing; and furniture. Gauteng is the only province with high-tech
manufacturing; next to non-metal mineral products, metals and metal products, and
furniture, it is specialised in electrical machinery and instruments.

• Provincial development authorities in the Eastern Cape pay a lot of attention to
attracting new industrial investments, especially FDI, but there is a lot less focus – or
maybe none – on retaining accumulated absorptive capacities in the form of
multinational firms who for whatever reason extricate movable capital equipment and
strategic assets such as group-internal core competences but who leave skills and
also a fair amount of tacit production and process knowledge behind. In the context of
the automotive industry – indisputably the primary technological and organisational
core of economic upgrading in the region – this suggests at best a lucky midterm
horizon with a high risk of running foul of events beyond the control of provincial or
even national policymakers, namely the fickleness of the key players in global
automotive assembly. In other words, local development strategies with enough
foresight would accompany the justified courting of DCSA with at least some
brainstorming in conjunction with industry and other stakeholders about a possible
post-DC world. At numerous component supplier plants, this is certainly of interest to
management and employees. It is not clear that public stakeholders in the Eastern
Cape appreciate this, let alone guide attendant soul-searching. This implies that what
may endanger the future of the regional economy is not so much local capabilities per
se, but a failure to coordinate the setting of priorities, identification of linkages, and
selection of public interventions within a larger vision for local development in the face
of global change. In other words, it is the very absence of a regional innovation
system that makes for trouble.

Percentage of households
using electricity for lighting

Percentage of households
using electricity for cooking