New innovators fund launched to prop up 4IR
Government has committed to support research and innovation as a means to attain a knowledgebased economy.
Launching a new funding programme for innovators dubbed Grand Challenges Botswana, the minister of Tertiary Education, Research, Science and Technology, Dr. Douglas Letsholathebe implored the innovators to be proactive.
“We are seeking space science solutions that will make use of data sets from our initiative to design and launch a micro satellite. This will tackle some of our national challenges going forward,” said Letsholathebe.
Challenges Botswana is a collaborative initiative under the Grand Challenges Africa (GC Africa) initiative, an AESA programme that awards seed and full grants to the continent’s most impressive innovators to promote Africa-led scientific innovations that help countries better achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Local Grand Challenge Africa has partnered with BIH to establish national Grand Challenges programme and catalyse scientific breakthroughs that have potential for high impact, scale, and sustainability and finding local solutions to solve Africa’s pressing challenges.
According to the minister, GC Botswana will provide funding to local innovators to develop and implement bold scientific solutions, beginning with its first challenge launched with a call for submission of concept notes for space applications for agriculture and tourism sectors, closing on 11 March 2021.
In addition, the call is in alignment with the national digital transformation initiatives expected to identify locally developed solutions and demonstrate the use of relevant emerging and fourth industrial revolution (4IR) related technologies.
Some of the solutions targeted are artificial intelligence and big data analytics in geospatial data, expected to benefit the tourism and agriculture sectors.
“Local innovators will be a lynchpin to promoting productivity in a myriad of sectors, effectively ensuring they contribute to national efforts to accelerate economic transformation and achieve our six national development priorities,” said Dr. Budzanani Tacheba, Director Innovation and Technology, Botswana Innovation Hub (BIH).