Scientific and technological cooperation between France and South Africa is growing rapidly, and France is also helping promote innovation in South Africa. “Research collaboration – the situation is very good with South Africa,” reports French science attaché to South Africa Pierre Lemonde.

“We have very strong scientific cooperation. France is South Africa’s fourth science partner, based on the number of scientific publications coauthored by French and South African researchers. The number of such papers in 2012 was close to 500.”

The number of such joint papers has been increasing by 20% a year. This has already allowed the European country to overtake Australia, previously in fourth place as a science partner for South Africa – the first three places are currently held by the US, the UK and Germany. While the number of joint papers between researchers from these countriesand South Africa has also been increasing, this has been at a lower average rate – 15%.

“The relationship is extremely dynamic. The cooperation is broad, but there are some particularly strong areas, such as palaeontology, oceanography and climate change,” he points out. There is a Franco-South African oceanography institute at the University of Cape Town, with about 11 French researchers from the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (Institute for Research for Development). Agriculture is another major area for research cooperation between the two countries.

“There are also about 200 research projects between French and South African universities and institutes which do not involve the permanent assignment of French staff to South Africa,” he adds. “These range from the nuclear to the human sciences.”

In fact, there are major bilateral partnerships in both these particular fields. Regarding nuclear sciences, there is significant cooperation with the South African Nuclear Energy Cor-poration (better known as Necsa). To strengthen cooperation in the human sciences, the French embassy has two researchers assigned to this country and working under the aegis of the French Institute in South Africa (Ifas). One is a historian and the other an archaeologist. (Ifas is better known for its cultural pro- grammes, but it includes a research centre for the human sciences.)

Regarding innovation, the aim of both France and South Africa is to develop cooperation between French and South African companies, focused on specific innovations. “Here, basically, we started from scratch,” says Lemonde. “With cooperation between companies – sometimes they don’t need you. Big companies can do their own thing.” Consequently, this cooperation is aimed mainly at small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs). “French and South African SMEs can have complementary technologies but be unaware of each other’s capabilities.”

Central to this effort is a cooper- ation agreement between South Africa’s Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) and its French counterpart, Oséo. As this is a framework agreement, with no concrete programmes specified, the French government decided to second a technical expert to the TIA. This expert arrived in 2011 and has now been in South Africa for more than two years.

“His goal is to end up with a programme [entailing] French and South African government cofinancing of projects involving French and South African com- panies,” he explains. “Several projects have been identified and are being developed. These are in the fields of energy and biotech- nology. We have similar programmes, which are running extremely well, with Israel, Canada and the US. The idea is not to create artificial programmes. The aim is that both companies contribute to innovation and both companies benefit.”

Finally, Lemonde notes that the role of the European Union (EU) in fostering cooperation between itself, its member states and South Africa should not be forgotten.