The Department of Science and Technology’s Innovation Fund has called on South Africa’s inventors and entrepreneurs to come up with new technologies in renewable energy as a means of reducing the country’s reliance on fossil fuels.

The Innovation Fund, which aims to invest in late-stage research and development and commercialise South African technologies, is looking for investment proposals for new and inventive technologies in renewable energy, metals, materials and manufacturing technologies.

“The need to reduce South Africa’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels for energy has inspired this call for proposals,” said Innovation Fund Intellectual Property Management office head McLean Sibanda, in an interview with Engineering News.

Any investment offered by the Innovation Fund is dependent on the particular needs of the project itself, although the fund does not make investments exceeding R15-million over a period of three years for each project.