Telkom and the National Research Foundation (NRF) have launched the Future Technologies (FutureTech) programme, a new initiative to co-fund technology research grants and the studies of postgraduate students and postdoctoral Fellows, to help drive innovation.
The FutureTech programme will support local universities in the research and development of future innovations, solutions and technologies. This will improve competitiveness in the Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector and other related fields.
Althon Beukes, CEO of Openserve, comments: “Through the Futuretech programme we are investing in the future of South Africa’s ICT sector and equipping our students to be skilled, competent professionals.
NRF CEO Dr Fulufhelo Nelwamondo adds: “We are delighted to partner with Telkom on the Futuretech initiative. The NRF has a mandate to contribute to science and technology capacity building in South Africa. This partnership forms part of our drive to achieve this important mandate and we appreciate the collaboration with industry, which also ensures that the capacity that we build is relevant.”
The Futuretech initiative is an extension of the Telkom Centres of Excellence (CoE) Programme, which Telkom has funded and coordinated for the past 26 years at South African tertiary institutions. It aims to advance and support training, learning and research in computer science and engineering.
The programme’s pilot phase will run for three years with a focus on skills, innovation and technology development in high-priority areas such as network and fibre optic solutions, multimodal sensing and internet of things, virtualisation and local artificial intelligence, language and speech technologies, to name a few.