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The South African bioeconomy strategy did not clearly articulate the measurement framework to monitor the implementation of the strategy. This paper provides an analysis of bioeconomy patents, the most prolific organizations and citations at the EPO and USPTO for South Africa, BRICS, Egypt and Nigeria during the Ten-Year Innovation Plan 2008–2018. The terms 'biotechnology', 'medical technology', 'pharmaceuticals' and 'selected environment-related technologies' were used to search for patents. The OECD patents by technology, the EPO PATSTAT and the USPTO PatFT databases were used to map patents and citations. The results show that South Africa ranked last in the BRICS group but produced a higher number of patents than Egypt and Nigeria. The number of patents generally decreased for the selected countries except for China. The total citations for the selected countries was generally inconsistent. The important innovators for South Africa in the bioeconomy are mainly universities and public research institutions. A new fiscal approach to encourage knowledge application in bioeconomy in South Africa is required. Incentives from government that encourage collaboration between research institutions and industry to direct research with industry application are required. The study contributes to the development of metrics to monitor the bioeconomy in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the university, industry and government (UIG) research and development (R&D) collaborations that academia in South African higher education institutions (HEIs) with clothing-related programmes engage in. In the research on which the paper is based, Fashion, Consumer Science, Textiles and Clothing Management academia were purposively sampled to gather data regarding the UIG R&D collaborations. Data collection was conducted through an online questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were employed to analyze data and present results in figures and graphs. Findings show that majority surveyed academia had never been involved in UIG R&D collaborations with any government levels, the clothing, textiles, leather and footwear (CTLF) industry or other clothing related organizations. The paper concludes that the ability of surveyed academia to produce 'relevant' new knowledge may be limited due to under developed UIG R&D collaborations. The likelihood of the surveyed clothing-related programmes producing graduates with 'relevant skills' for a changing world may also be negatively impacted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]