Hon Deputy Speaker, the convention for the Square Kilometre Array Observatory as SKA, in which South Africa is a partner state comes as a major step forward for the nation. The ratification of this observatory in Parliament today will drive our efforts to ensure the country's further development in the education fields of science and technology.
This collaboration sees one of the biggest scientific partnerships in turn international governs. What is significant for South Africa is that we are one of the three host countries along side Australia and the United Kingdom. This shows the importance in the role South Africa must play to drive the success of this program as key stakeholders.
South Africa will act as a host that assists the establishment of basis for other African nations. The SKA project shall possess the capability of transformational science. It has a combination of sensitivity, angular resolution and survey spit for surpassing the current state of art instruments at relevant radio frequencies.
This means that the radio telescope will improve the understanding of the universe and the law of fundamental physics by monitoring the sky in the never seen before detail and mapping. In doing so, it will be more than one hundred times faster than any other technology that the world currently uses.
In the past we have experienced a brain drain in Africa where students leave the continent to further develop their skills elsewhere and sometimes due to lack of infrastructure and opportunity. In this case, incentives have been made for students who will benefit from this technology and program to remain within the continent and South Africa.
This project will bring about more opportunities for the education within the field and directly contribute to more jobs. We must bring together a fully united collaboration with other African countries to start the development of our technology and capabilities in the high tech industry.
We must start identifying skills and trades that will benefit from this and align our education sector to produce learners capable of exploiting the advantages that come from research and technology with the programs such as this. The IFP welcomes this ratification. Thank you.
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