Strategy focuses on job creation in the rural areas

DST’s bio-economy strategy is to get stakeholders and members from the private sector and academia to ensure that biotechnology research done in South Africa follows through to a commercially viable product.

Jugmohan-Naidu noted that the growing cashmere industry could possibly meet international demand and said that goats were under-utilised in SA.

“Attempts that have been made to commercialise indigenous knowledge systems have come from overseas rather than locally. We as South Africans should be patenting our own resources.”