President Cyril Ramaphosa launched the Presidential PhD Initiative, which received R1-billion in initial funding from the National Skills Fund, to create opportunities for South Africa's "brightest young minds" at world-leading universities and research institutions.

Ramaphosa made the announcement on Tuesday at the inaugural presidential plenary on science, technology and innovation, which brought together role-players from the public and private sectors to discuss how to drive innovation forward in South Africa.

The president said high levels of research and development (R&D) were crucial to growing the South African economy at a faster rate.

He said South Africa dedicated around 0.6% of its gross domestic product to R&D, which was much less than in many other regions, such as the United States, China and South Korea.

Higher Education, Science and Technology Minister Blade Nzimande had previously affirmed the government's commitment to increasing spending on R&D to 1.5% of GDP.

Ramaphosa echoed the need for greater investment in this sector.

"It is clear that we are certainly progressing, but we are not doing so at [the] pace that is required. We need to add more speed.

"For science, technology and innovation to serve our economy and to serve our people effectively, we need to aggressively and strategically invest more in education and skills development," he said.

He announced the launch of the initiative at the conference, which was kicked off with the R1-billion investment from the National Skills Fund.

"The aim of the first phase is to expose our country's brightest young minds to cutting-edge thinking and research by negotiating opportunities at world-leading universities and research centres," he said.

He said studies would be linked to well-established research programmes in public bodies and in industry.

Some of the skills targeted by the programme are artificial intelligence research, advanced biotechnology, fuel cell development, batteries and other storage, and next-generation mining. 

Ramaphosa said the goal was to work with private actors and international authorities to grow the investment for the fund to R5-billion by 2030.