Collaboration between SA, Chinese varsities to tackle climate challenges

'ROBUST, SOVEREIGN RESEARCH'

- SIPHO JACK

MINISTER of Science, Technology and Innovation, Blade Nzimande, said yesterday that one of the fundamental challenges facing the scientific community presently was the imbalance in the world system of knowledge production.

He was speaking at the 3rd International Conference on Earth and Environmental Science, hosted by the University of Zululand at the Durban International Convention Centre, and expressed concern that historically disadvantaged universities must not fall into the trap of merely consuming knowledge produced elsewhere.

Instead, he urged them to actively contribute to the global knowledge project. He said: “While we value collaboration, we do not want our historically disadvantaged universities to be comfortable with simply being consumers of the knowledge that others produce.”