Innovation Fund - Facilitating Technological Innovation

Working hand-in-hand with the government, the Innovation Fund aims to improve the lives of South Africans by helping anyone with ideas for technological innovation to enter the business world and contribute to its positive growth. This exciting initiative from the Department of Science and Technology was set up in 1999 and is managed by the National Research Foundation. The Innovation Fund is mandated to promote technological innovation through investing in late - stage research and development, Intellectual Property protection and commercialisation of novel and inventive South African technologies.

Innovation Fund is migrating to the Technology Innovation Agency

The Innovation Fund is one of the organisations currently being migrated into the newly created Technology Innovation Agency (TIA). The full migration is expected to be completed by June 2010. Due to the activities associated with this transition, particularly a review of opportunities funded by the various migrating organisations for alignment with the TIA mandate and budget, coupled with the high volume of applications for funding received by the Innovation Fund in the last quarter of 2009, there are delays in processing the applications. Furthermore, all currently funded projects together with the applications in our pipeline are currently being transferred to TIA and will be processed accordingly under TIA's funding instruments and mechanisms which are being finalised. In particular, applications go through an evaluation process which culminates in a recommendation to the TIA Investment Committee, and this committee's deliberations will, apart from the essential merits of the application, include other factors such as alignment to the TIA mandate, the rationalised portfolio, availability of funds and risk exposure. We apologise for any inconvenience caused by any delays in processing any applications and can assure you of our best efforts to continue to attend to applications efficiently and effectively in this time of transition. Progress on each application, or any change in requirements and funding availability, will be communicated to applicants as and when progress is made on evaluating the applications.