Every Friday morning, SAfm's AMLive's radio anchor John Perlman speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly. Reported here is this Friday's At the Coalface transcript:

Perlman: Progress often depends on research and research often depends on money, I believe you have got some good news.

Creamer: Yes, the European Union is making available R1-billion to South African researchers and this is not going to be a top-down type of approach or a donor-recipient type of approach, but they are looking for partnerships. Europeans also have their own research expenditure problem called the European Paradox, where the wonderful research and development that takes place at the ivory-tower level, all too seldom cascades down to European factory floors. South Africa is seen as a help in this regard. Now, how do South Africans access these funds? South Africans just need to form their own consortia and apply for these and it will be an excellence-driven type funding allocation and not a quota-driven one. So, they have to put their case very strongly and they will also get support from South Africa's Department of Science and Technology, which will co-fund a lot of these research proposals that span a broad spectrum, including research into food, energy and even astronomy, where South Africa has quite a good niche, and biotechnology. Coinciding with this funding is a pre-feasibility study, which was begun this month, which is aimed at the European Union helping South Africa to develop through science and technology, in just the same way it has helped us to develop through trade.

Perlman: While all this has been going on researchers have been busy in solar-panel design.

Creamer: South Africa has had a breakthrough in solar-panel design. The person at the forefront of this is an academic from the University of Johannesburg, Vivian Alberts. Alberts did an intense study of solar panels for his thesis and he looked at silicon's use in solar panels, which is one of the most expensive elements in solar panels, but which is not really that good as an absorber of sunlight and he looked for an alternative material. The substrate that he uses now is just ordinary window-pane glass, helping him to come down the cost-curve dramatically, going to about R8 a Watt versus R40 a Watt, the price at which panels are imported. He is making solar panels at a fraction of what they cost and with panels very light in weight and the glass coated with several exotic metals. He has proved commercial viability in his pilot plant, which is the latest progress that he has made. He is now talking about setting-up a full-scale commercial plant in South Africa in the next 12 months and then having another in Germany and a third in Australia, each producing about 25 MW of panels a year, and from a South African point of view, making sure that we make affordable use of our sunlight for the generation of electricity.

Perlman: Martin, we often talk of tourism as a big job creator, but the other thing that has been making the news lately is call centres.

Creamer: A report came out this week from McKinsey, which indicated that 100 000 jobs are up for South Africans if we can get our call-centre activities right. This particular study was backed and funded by the Johannesburg City Council in partnership with the SA Foundation and ComMark Trust. They have found that our call-centre costs are $8 a seat on the wrong side of top-dog India and we need to come down that cost-curve. One of the ways of doing it will be to increase the skills-inventory, because this is where we are not meeting supply needs well enough. Also, we need to reduce telephone costs, a process which has begun, because in February, South Africa liberalised the telecommunications industry and we are coming down the telecoms cost-curve, but need to come down further. At the same time they are looking to establishing a public-private partnership that can strategise competitive call-centre activity and make sure that we compete with the likes of Malaysia at the second-tier level. There are something like 500 000 jobs up for grabs between now and 2009. If South Africa gets in early and strategically, it is hoping to get 100 000 of those jobs.

Perlman: Something to look forward to. Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly, he'll be back with us at the same time next week.

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