New Earth Observation Frontiers Enterprise Innovation Support Fund (South Africa)

This initiative is a sub-program of NEOFrontiers, which is funded by SANSA and managed by the NRF to support skills, technology and product development.

The main objective of the NEOFrontiersEISF is to support entrepreneurs, startups and SMMEs to transform their space-based ideas to products and/or services in order to increase the competitiveness of the South African EO sector and benefit the South African society at large. The NEOFrontiersEISF is intended to stimulate the development of innovative solutions in the EO sector, foster the growth and development of competitive EO companies in the country and stimulate co-opetition (coordination, collaboration, cooperation, and competitiveness) between South African EO companies.

The proposals to be considered in the NEOFrontiersEISF will focus on novel uses of Earth Observation in the following areas:

• Applications and product development in banking, insurance, mining, health innovation, and community-based services.
• Cross cutting service areas/decision support tools to support the circular economy; blue economy; security and defence; food security/precision agriculture; disaster risk reduction; and early warning systems.

Funding

• The grant that will be awarded to the funded enterprises will be through the incubation partner. In cases where academic institutions are involved the portion of the funds will be transferred directly by the NRF. Each project will be funded up to a R1 million for the duration of the project and the awarded funding will be restricted to research and innovation related activities.
• Implementation: The projects will be implemented at the premises of the participating companies. The approved projects will be supported for a period of 6 to 12 months. Thereafter the developed technologies or products would be supported through other innovation funding partners such as Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) and the Innovation Hub.

Type of Support

The support that will be provided to startups and SMMEs will depend on their specific needs, this may include technology development support, business development, skills development, and provision of equipment where necessary.

• Technology development expertise: expertise to undertake technology and product development may be sourced from consultants in the academic and/or private sector locally and internationally.
• Skills development: As part of youth empowerment in scarce skills, participation and involvement of youth including postgraduate students at South African public universities is encouraged. This may be by spending time at funded SMMEs learning technical skills related to the EO sector. In addition to technical skills development, the startups and SMMEs will be supported with business skills. This will be done in partnership with the NEOFrontiersEISF implementing partner Tuksnovation where training and support on business skills such as financial management and marketing may be provided through incubation to the enterprises that require those services.
• Equipment: The grant may be allocated to funding research equipment to improve the technical capabilities and innovation capacity.

Outputs: The expected outputs from the supported projects will include technologies, prototypes, products and trained personnel.

Fundable Activities

• Development of a technology, prototype or product
• Product development
• Skills development
• Business support and advisory
• Equipment that is related to the completion of the project and will not be more than 30% of the approved amount, this will only be approved if any other service provider does not have the required equipment
• Piloting and conducting of field studies

Eligibility Criteria

• The following conditions must be met for the applying enterprises to be considered for funding.
  • Must be a South African citizen with a Small Micro and Medium Enterprise registered with the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC)
  • Must have a valid Tax clearance certificate
  • Must have a valid BBBEE certificate
  • Must have an innovative idea that can be used to address challenges in the above-mentioned focus areas
• Enterprises that intend to partner with experts at academic institutions will be assisted by the NRF to find relevant partners.

For more information, visit National Research Foundation (NRF).