The Aerospace Industry Support Initiative (AISI) which is part of Minister Ebrahim Patel’s Department of Trade, Industry, and Commerce (DTIC) is looking at South Africa’s small and medium-sized entrepreneur community for technology support.
AISI aims to increase the contribution of SMMEs, enhance BBBEE, raise investment levels overall, and in defined priority areas as well as increasing export opportunities. Other aims include building skills and technology platforms, improving competitiveness, and enabling new suppliers to enter supply chains.
To this end, it is calling for proposals in four specific areas in line with government objectives on the aeronautic, defence and space industrial sectors. These are technology-based supplier development, industrializing technologies, industry transformation, and job creation.
The CSIR hosts AISI which is a fully-funded mechanism to support these three sectors of the South African economy, all currently suffering the same malaise of the coronavirus pandemic as the national economy.
As far as industrial development and technology support for the aeronautic, defence and space sectors is concerned, the call for proposals plans to promote partnerships, provide success to infrastructure and expertise as well as knowledge transfer.
Manufacturing SMME with less than 200 full-time employees and under R51 million annual turnover are encouraged to apply via a proposal template (www.aisi.co.za) or contact Livison Mashoko, AISI technical leader, on lmashoko@csir.co.za.
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