South Africa has drawn up a draft memorandum of understanding (MoU) covering science, technology and innovation (STI) cooperation within the five-member Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) group. South Africa was asked to do this at the second Brics STI senior officials meeting, which took place in Pretoria in November last year. The draft MoU is to be discussed at the third Brics STI senior officials meeting, scheduled to take place in India in the next few days. The senior officials meeting will be followed, during the first quarter of next year, by the first Brics STI Ministerial meeting, which will be held in South Africa.

The purpose of the proposed MoU is to build on existing bilateral STI cooperation between Brics countries and strengthen such cooperation on a ‘pentilateral’ basis. Such reinforced cooperation is, in turn, intended to speed up sustainable socioeconomic development in the five States.

The MoU is known to cover a number of broad themes and areas of research. These include aeronautics, basic research, biotech-nology and medicine, climate change, earth observation, energy conservation, food secur- ity and agriculture, high-performance comput-ing, nanotechnology, new and renewable energy, space and astronomy and water resources and the treatment of pollution. Other areas covered are technology transfer and innovation policy and programmes information exchange. Finally, the MoU also embraces science parks, incubators and high-technology zones.

The MoU, once confirmed and adopted, would be implemented by designated Ministries and departments in the five countries. These are the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, the Indian Department of Science and Technology, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology and the South African Department of Science and Technology.

The oversight structure for this cooperation would comprise, at the top, the Brics STI Ministerial meeting, followed by the Brics STI senior officials meeting and the Brics STI working group. The Ministers will meet at least once a year and the senior officials every year, while the working group (composed of the five countries’ STI coordinators) will convene between meet-ings of the senior officials and also act as a secretariat for the senior officials meetings.

In terms of issues, the draft document covers cooperation mechanisms and methods, fund-ing and intellectual property (IP) rights. Cooperation mechanisms would include short-term exchanges of scientific and tech-nological personnel, STI training programmes and the holding of conferences, seminars and workshops. There should also be STI information exchange. The national research agencies and academies (both scientific and engineering) of the member States would cooperate. Col- laborative research and development pro-grammes would be created. Calls for research proposals would be issued at the same time in all the Brics countries. Cooperation could include the creation of joint large-scale research infrastructure.

The funding of such Brics STI infrastructure and projects would be done jointly. This funding would be divided equally among the five countries. Emphasis would be given to new frontier research, the coproduction of new knowledge, products and services and knowledge and technology transfer.

Regarding IP, this would have to be managed in accordance with the laws of all the Brics States. Results of joint Brics research programmes could only be revealed and/or exploited with the explicit agreement of all those involved.

The need to develop science, technology and innovation cooperation between the five countries was included in the Sanya Declaration, which was issued at the 2011 Brics Summit in Sanya, China. The proposed MoU would be valid for five years and be automatically renewed for further five-year periods, unless a country withdraws. Amendments are possible, provided all the parties agree, at any time.