A nanotechnology-foresight perspective of South Africa

This paper presents a foresight perspective of nanotechnology in South Africa based on a 20-year period scientometric analysis of the country’s nanotechnology publications on the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection. Firstly, publication trends are reported; then, possible socio-economic relevant sectors arising from this information are determined. Lastly, indicators that can be used in foresight exercises to evaluate the potential nanotechnology research areas in South Africa are examined. The 20-year review is also compared with the recent past year, 2019, to identify any changing trends. South Africa’s nanotechnology publications per year grew exponentially from 68 papers in 2000 to 1672 in 2019, an increase of 2459%. The total share of nanotech publications increased from 1.4% in 2000 to 6.6% in 2019, thus a 0.52% increase per year. Compared with Brazil, Russia, India and China, the BRICS countries, South Africa has the lowest nanotechnology productivity with an activity index of 0.68. Over the last 5 years, South Africa nanotech publications had a Hirsch-index of 94 and an average citations rate of 12.76 per paper. Universities are the most prominent publishers, and there are very few publications from the private sector, which can negatively impact the commercialisation of nanotechnology research. The top 10 most prolific researchers, author or co-author over 20% of the nanotechnology papers are reported. A mixture of old and new top researchers’ names suggests succession planning in the system as the years progress. The emergence of computer science as one of the top 20 subjects publishing in nanotech in 2019 and a high level of researcher collaboration suggests possible convergence of nanotech, information technology and artificial intelligence in South Africa. The strategic socio-economic-focused nanotechnology research areas identified for South Africa include material science, photoluminance and optics, medicine, catalysis, electronics, energy, biotech, magnetism, sensors, water and communicable diseases. The top collaborating countries, top researchers, top institutions and nanotechnology economic hubs are reported for each strategic research area. The level of innovation was evaluated using the nanotechnology value chain, and there is a meagre 3.5% of papers reporting on nano-enabled products.