Deadline: 27-Sep-24
The Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) is inviting applications for the Youth Technology and Innovation Programme.
TIA has established the Youth Technology and Innovation Programme (YTIP) to advance several critical policy intents of the 2019 White Paper on Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) as well as transformation and inclusivity within the National System of Innovation (NSI). YTIP is TIA’s dedicated innovation programme to primarily address systemic failures by creating supportive and enabling environment essential for contributing to an integrated and well-coordinated innovation-entrepreneurship ecosystem for young innovators.
As a pilot project, the current Call for Expression of Interest is targeted at public and private sector organisations, with an interest in addressing youth challenges, to support the implementation of the YTIP in Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces.
Purpose and Objectives
- To respond to the unemployment challenges faced by youth, the YTIP is created to deliver a sustainable ecosystem capable of including youth innovators in the economy of South Africa and increasing participation of youth in South African economic activities through techno-entrepreneurship for self-employment, job creation, income generation and improved livelihood of youth in South Africa.
- The objective of YTIP is to achieve the following outcomes:
- well-coordinated, integrated, and responsive innovation-entrepreneurship ecosystem to address the needs of youth innovators.
- sufficiently funded and resourced innovation-entrepreneurship ecosystem.
- mobilisation of stakeholders, partners and role-players to support the ecosystem.
- to produce trained, skilled, and capable youth entrepreneurs who can:
- develop and commercialise competitive innovative products, and
- establish and manage sustainable tech-enterprises.
Scope of Work
- Activities expected to be performed by TIA: programme oversight, strategy development, monitoring and evaluation, intelligence gathering on systemic gaps, coordination, provide process, templates and platform, and monitoring and evaluation.
- Activities to be performed by Implementing Partners (depending on expertise and capacity):
- Capacity building: capacitating HEI/TVET lecturers, students, and staff of the Office of the Technology Transfer for previously disadvantaged institutions.
- Pre-investment phase of the programme: the partners will implement the competition, assist to define the competition, rules of the competition, assist innovators to complete application on the portal, participate in the judging committee, host the provincial competition, identify innovative ideas from the student innovators, conduct due diligence on the applications received, monitoring and evaluation, and reporting.
- Post-award phase of the programme: the partners will be involved in contracting of the beneficiaries, providing support for technology development, incubation, mentorship, capacity building and skill transfer to previously disadvantaged institutions, assist in seeking follow-on funding, commercialisation support and IP strategy development, assist the funded projects with market access opportunities, access to business development and financial skills, value chain analysis and identifying opportunities within value chains and production systems, monitoring and evaluation, and reporting.
- Providing value-added services: promotion of the programme, awareness, networking, partnership, co-funding, and fund raising.
Targeted Youth Segment
- YTIP is targeted at four specific segments within the youth stakeholder grouping (18-35 years), these are:
- Students at universities particularly undergraduates and post-graduates who have innovative tech-based ideas, but their technology is not linked to the universities’ research work.
- Learners at TVET colleges who have innovative tech-based ideas.
- Unemployed graduates and youth outside of formal systems of research and innovation who have innovative tech-based ideas but do not meet the requirements of being a Grassroots Innovator.
Eligibility Criteria
- The entity must be a South African organisation.
- The operations of the organisations must be in either in Mpumalanga or Limpopo.
- The organisation must have track record of minimum of 3 years of delivering the services required
- Preference will be given to organisations with a project team that is diverse and inclusive (women, youth, people with disabilities).
- The organisation must produce the last three years of audited financial statements.
For more information, visit TIA.